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    Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms
    Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms
    Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms
    Ebook194 pages1 hour

    Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms

    By Linda Berdoll

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    About this ebook

    At a loss for words, hockey puck? You can always quote Shakespeare...

    Or delve into this entertaining compendium of insults and verbal abuse, all couched in language of the most uplifting nature. Filled with common and not-so-common zingers that will both shock you and make you laugh your @$$! off.

    Includes:

    • Exactly how to address individual mounds of foul, undigested lumps of donkey entrails
    • That "F"-ing word and other intensives
    • Many, many ways to refer to the part that goes over the fence last
    • More euphemisms, synonyms, phrases and descriptions than you knew existed for sexual activities, proclivities, untoward incidents, accidents of nature and the beast with two backs
    • Addressing the mentally incompetent, the cerebrally challenged, the absurdly bureaucratic, the impossibly rational and other instances of ineptitude, obfuscation or obstruction and much more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateMay 1, 2007
    ISBN9781402250583
    Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms
    Author

    Linda Berdoll

    Researching her bestselling novels Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy & Elizabeth, author Linda Berdoll was surprised and delighted by the euphemisms she turned up--most of them of an insulting nature. Berdoll compiled them here to entertain and enlighten. She lives on a pecan farm in Del Valle, Texas, with her husband.

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      Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things - Linda Berdoll

      Acknowledgements

      Aspersions, brickbats, carping, cavil, censure, denunciation, disparagement, reproach, opprobrium, reproof, stricture, vitriol, epithets, and vituperation

      Censuring the

      Inherent Fool:

      The

      Lost Art

      Few would argue that some behavior is so abhorrent, it demands redressing. Regardless of justification—idiot drivers, impudent clerks, adolescents who have been spawn by the devil—we as a society simply cannot condone smacking the offender upside the head. (Admittedly, we institute this decision partly in deference to decorum, but also in the distinct possibility that said transgressor might be packing heat.) Since throwing the bric-a-brac can become prohibitively expensive, our only alternative is to let fly with a few choice words.

      That acknowledged, it is miserably apparent that standards about what is said or heard in public have become remarkably lax. What comes out of the mouths of babes nowadays would have once made a fishwife blush. Not that we deplore vehement notification of character flaws, but chucking stock profanities about does not exhibit the exercise of intellect to which we aspire. To wit:

      Granted, no one can hold a verbal candle to Will Shakespeare, but with a few carefully tailored ripostes, one might just leave the miscreants of society flummoxed, if not actually chastened.

      Hos and Hounds

      Call Him a Rat;
         Just Don't Call Him a Mouse.

      Once, was one to imply a man less than a gentleman, one would have to meet him at dawn accompanied by one's seconds. The current vogue of anti-heroes appears to have reversed such a notion. Calling a man a rogue, scoundrel, heel or even humping dog will not necessarily be an insult. Therefore, with honor now discounted, the male character flaws vulnerable for attack are intellect, cuckoldry wimpiness and penis size.

      He's a most notable coward, an infinite and

      endless liar, an hourly prose-breaker, the owner

      of no one-good quality.

      Shakespeare

      Homo-Boobus

      To properly vilify the cabbage-headed oaf, we must, unfortunately blaspheme the animal kingdom*—polecat, skunk, swine, baboon, (particularly effective with a British inflection) varmint, goose, or donkey. However, if one calls him a capon (a de-knackered chicken), one has hit a triple—not only is he a graceless lout, but also a eunuch —and unless he was in 4H, unlikely to comprehend the slam.

      Dullard, dim bulb, dolt, lobberhead, or flap-doodle are inherent fools. A lurdane or sluggard is not only a fool, but a lazy fool. The particularly cantankerous ignoramus is a devil child, demon rogue, archfiend, churl, Mephistopheles, or carcass fit for dogs. If one wanted to cover all the

      * (In that today few people understand that an ass is actually a four-legged animal, not the gluteal area surrounding one's anus, we omitted it.)

      bases, there is Lusus naturae, which is Latin for freak of nature. To clarify the subtle difference between a jerk and a dunce, one must remember not to credit insult that can be more appropriately explained by stupidity.

      You met your wife's wit

      Not so very long ago if a man found his wife in bed with another man and took a shotgun to them both, it was ruled justifiable homicide. Hence, it might be wise to make certain there is a clear avenue for escape before one goes rattling this particular cage. If one does have the moxie to do it, there is only one way to go. To quote Pulp Fiction, one has to get medieval on his ass. To do so effectively, one must become intimately familiar with terms as old as the middle ages.

      We begin with the word cuckold, which many believe originates with the French word for cuckoo bird. This conclusion is apparently due to that dirty bird's penchant for depositing, then abandoning, its monstrous egg into some unsuspecting little wren's nest for it to hatch, then attempt to feed. History has writ cuckoldry a shooting offense, giving us to understand quite clearly that men do not want another's cuckoo baby in their nest. In that the cuckoo egg-layer and proprietress of said nest are both female should

      going to your neighbor's bed.

      Shakespeare

      throw a monkey wrench in this entire affronted manhood stuff, but as far as we can determine, it has not.

      The derivations of most of our terms for cheating appear to be some convolution of the definition for horn—hard protuberance, e.g. penis, and cornu—horn-shaped anatomical characteristic. Indeed, there was a mythical beast called a bicorn, which, legend says, used to eat husbands who had unfaithful wives (as to why these victims of infidelity were the ones preyed upon, our crack team of researchers have been unable to ascertain).

      Then there is the Greek legend of Artemis who caught Actaeon peeking while she was bathing and turned him into a stag, thereupon causing his own hounds to eat him—which maybe served him right.

      Hence, the poor cuckold is doomed to

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