Twunting Wazzocks
Gia is rightly proud of her father, because he has started calling Bush a “twunt”. (Twunt: 1780 google hits.) This got me thinking about the origin of the word. The first use I have found was by Chris Morris, in his hoax Richard Geefe Observer column on the 30th of May 1999. But did he invent the term? It certainly sounds like a morrisism, and he has form for hybridising two words that mean the same thing:
And I’m afraid we will have to see that little girl being upset in a rather more sustained way later on in tonight’s deeply disturbing broadgramme.
— Brasseye
But perhaps someone out there knows of an earlier incidence?
Whilst I’m a big supporter of innovative new terms of abuse, I do think we need to make sure that perfectly good words don’t get left by the wayside. For example, when I was young, Wazzock (1180 google hits) was a perfectly acceptable insult. These days it is almost never heard, and when, as part of my one-man campaign to resurrect the term, I call somebody one, it is usually meeted with ridicule or assumed to be an ironic referrence to the now distant wazzock-happy heyday of the 80s, rather than a serious attempt to insult somebody. Oh how the Wazzock has fallen…
Anyone else have any seriously endangered swear words, or up-and-coming insults to look out for?
July 12th, 2004 at 23:37
Haven’t heard ‘pillock’ for a while. It may be a regional thing.
July 13th, 2004 at 14:33
Pillock, Wazzock, twat, twinkie all gone the way of the Dodo one suspects. Sigh. Nostalgia.
July 13th, 2004 at 21:26
New: I do like “cuntcock”, blunt but synergistic.
Old: Where’s “wally”?
July 16th, 2004 at 17:03
You can, of course, also use twallock. But if you want to know more about “twunt” do check it out in The Urban Dictionary
Your Pal
July 26th, 2004 at 17:01
quimbacile. a bit of an idiot and also a bit of a cunt.
May 3rd, 2006 at 20:05
Since when has wazuk (our local spelling) been dead and gone? No-one’s told us up in Cheshire and the Peaks. Mind, this is a particularly good place to live, with a rich vein of non-swearing insults.