A lot of our old insult words, words that seem reasonably respectable to use these days, have their origins in old racial or ethnic prejudices.
"Barbarian" comes from the way Romans used to make fun of the speech of non-Romans, saying "bar bar bar bar" to represent their speech.
"Philistine" refers to the people of ancient Philistia (a coastal region of southern Palestine), whom I guess a lot of other people didn't much care for.
"Cretin" is actually a slam against Christians. (Until I checked it out just now via dictionary.com, I thought it had to do with people from the island of Crete.)
And while the word "idiot" isn't exactly respectable, no one considers you to be making a slam against the mentally handicapped if you use the word -- yet "idiot" used to be a technical classification for "a person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers".
but lots of conservative people upper middle class snobby kids. ewww
Actually, I think you'd find the People's Republic of UVA to be pretty hostile (and more Leftist) compared with most places in the South. Chapel Hill is no better -- maybe it's all the academic types -- "do as I say, not as I do" or "NIMBY" being the buzzwords.
Comments
"Barbarian" comes from the way Romans used to make fun of the speech of non-Romans, saying "bar bar bar bar" to represent their speech.
"Philistine" refers to the people of ancient Philistia (a coastal region of southern Palestine), whom I guess a lot of other people didn't much care for.
"Cretin" is actually a slam against Christians. (Until I checked it out just now via dictionary.com, I thought it had to do with people from the island of Crete.)
And while the word "idiot" isn't exactly respectable, no one considers you to be making a slam against the mentally handicapped if you use the word -- yet "idiot" used to be a technical classification for "a person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers".
I'm going to dig out my Esperanto thesaurus to find some good ones...
Originally posted by stevegongrui
but lots of conservative people upper middle class snobby kids. ewww
Actually, I think you'd find the People's Republic of UVA to be pretty hostile (and more Leftist) compared with most places in the South. Chapel Hill is no better -- maybe it's all the academic types -- "do as I say, not as I do" or "NIMBY" being the buzzwords.