For those of us that like words...
English, whatever its other merits, has as many disparaging words
as one would possibly desire. The example that follows is from Sir
Thomas Urquhart's 1653 translation of Rabelais' work Gargantua and
Pantagruel, a translation that draws heavily on vocabulary used in
Scotland in his time:
The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable
to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them
most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous
gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed
scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers,
slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts,
cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-
varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering
companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks,
scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs,
idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish
grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish
loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers,
lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock
slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons,
turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory
epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat
no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 05:50 am (UTC)and knowing a grate deal of ppl
who know more then one langue
(weather english is first or not)
had lead me to one conculsion..
The English its self is a merit :P
no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 11:02 am (UTC)cozening, isnt that the act of being cozy? foxes are good at that for the most part, hmmm..
hehe anyways. Interesting tidbit of information, and yes I do actually know what cozening means
-Sey
no subject
Date: 2003-07-17 09:29 pm (UTC)foxes are very good at being cozy
I also know what cozening means 8-)