My friend Derek—who’s moved his online musings from here to here—sent me a link to The Origins of 9 Great British Insults. Which is weird, because I happened to be reading this at the time.
While recognizing the social need for taboo language, I remain indifferent to much of it. I mean, I’m rarely offended when the “n-word” is used; the various and—let’s be honest—downright ingenious ways the f-bomb is deployed are more likely to make me giggle than to cause indignation.
Which brings me back to the British insults list, from which we learn that “clod hopper” appears in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Would that offend anyone today? And if not, is it a function of the evolution of language, or evidence that we’ve become desensitized?
Or—and this is by far the more likely scenario—am I way over-thinking it?
