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The origins and meanings of body-part based insults

  
 
40%
14:15 / 20.04.04
This has been in the back of my mind ever since an incident a few years ago where I had an argument with a mate of mine. He called me a prick during the course of the argument, but the next day when we were discussing it, his defence for having said this was "well I never said you were an arsehole..."

Comical as it sounded, I kind of understood what he meant. He was saying that my behaviour had been thoughtless and inconsiderate, but he was not saying I was a nasty person. If he had called me a twat, I would have felt it was more scathing towards my personality. If he had called me an anus, it would have suggested I was an idiot and not really worth his time.

Someone in a thread recently called somebody a cunt, and it was interesting because that was exactly the word I had been thinking of using had I not refrained. All of which suggests that the word has some particular meaning that myself and the other poster both had in mind. In this case, it suggested the person being irredeemably unpleasant.

So, my question is, how did these words come to mean particular things, if indeed you agree that they do. They don't seem to have any strict relation to the body parts to which they refer. Or do they? Why is it that the insults referring to female genitalia tend to be the worst (my suggested interpretation of the word 'cunt' raises some serious questions)? Does this reflect negative attitudes towards female sexuality, or sexuality in general? Why do other cultures not use these words in the same ways?
 
 
Smoothly
14:59 / 20.04.04
It's a dirty job which has, in large part, been done here.
Good topic though.
 
 
Sax
15:12 / 20.04.04
Ha. That's my favourite thread, ever.
 
 
40%
19:51 / 22.04.04
LLBIMG: Do you really think when the word is used pejoratively it's to "apply qualities and attributes of that portion of anatomy" to something else? How absurd. Cunt, dick and asshole are completely interchangeable as swear words...

(From the linked thread)

That is the assertion I am questioning here. I would say they are clearly not, and the examples I give above I think go a little way to demonstrating that. No doubt others could suggest their own examples.

The other thread covers a lot of the underlying issues of what swearing is, how its offensiveness is measured, and, to use Haus's terminology, "the relationship between second-order terminologies and their descriptors".

What I am interested in here is the apparent lack of relationship between second-order terminologies and their descriptors.

The Monkey: I always thought words like "prick" "cock" and "dick" drew a comparison between the physicality and body mechanics of the erect penis and the behavior of the person so described. If you get an erection in most social settings, it is inappropriate and awkward, a thing to be ignored, talked around...even though its presence it vividly obvious. A penis protrudes from the body, standing out from the symmetry and order of the rest of the body. It's mechanical function is to thrust, intrude, penetrate. Now map these physical features onto the personality traits the someone labelled a "prick", etc., possesses.

Now, if that is the case, should words like 'prick', 'dick', 'cock' etc not be entirely equivalent in their usage? I personally find that they're not. I would use 'dick' to describe someone who is embarassing, 'prick' to describe someone who is inconsiderate and arrogant, and 'cock' to describe someone who is so aggravating that you want put their head through a wall. Is there any more widespread distinction between the words, or is that just my view? And why did another poster think to use exactly the same word I did to describe someone?

I would suggest considering the relation between 'twat' and 'cunt', but evidently that would be more complex and controversial, so perhaps we could stick to male genitalia.

TBH, I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to achieve here. Maybe I'm just thinking aloud. But hey, this is the conversation...
 
 
ibis the being
20:09 / 22.04.04
I don't think the swear words refer to the body parts as much as they refer to the worst traits typically associated with the genders of the persons who wear the body parts in question. Thus, "arrogant," "aggravating," "inconsiderate" and so on are the meanings of penis synonyms, while cunt and twat (and less relevantly bitch) usually mean "mean screeching intolerable complaining nag" or something like that.

I think there's a big difference between the UK use of cunt and the American. Round here it's just not said, it's maybe the most offensive cuss possible and on par with the most loathsome of racial epithets, but British folks seem to use it somewhat more casually, from what I've observed.
 
  
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