10 British Insults Americans Won't Understand

[c.d.]

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/02/10-british-insults-americans-wont-understand

c.d.

[Scott Nelson]

Twit or twat? Who knows?

[GUT]

Twit and Twat are pretty similar in meaning.

Not sure what you see if you click on it but here the first thing before the item starts is a common sign here "Don't be a Tosser".

[PaulB]

As it says, "twit" originally meant a mild rebuke, then the person who given to twitting, and finally it means a silly person. "Twat", as the article says, means the vagina, and is the same as using the "c" word. It's had that meaning for centuries and seems only to have been used interchangeably for "twit" in the last few decades, probably through ignorance.

[GUT]

As it says, "twit" originally meant a mild rebuke, then the person who given to twitting, and finally it means a silly person. "Twat", as the article says, means the vagina, and is the same as using the "c" word. It's had that meaning for centuries and seems only to have been used interchangeably for "twit" in the last few decades, probably through ignorance.

I clearly didn't express myself well.

Let me put it this way, in all my lie they've both meant you're a f'ing idjit.

[Sam Flynn]

It's had that meaning for centuries and seems only to have been used interchangeably for "twit" in the last few decades, probably through ignorance.

As an seven year-old, on holiday in a cottage in the Brecon Beacons, my uncle Paul put his raincoat on back-to-front. We all laughed, and I called him a "twat", whereupon the laughter abruptly ceased. It only resumed when I explained, in all honesty and innocence, that I just thought it was another way of saying "twit".

[Sam Flynn]

Another seemingly innocent-sounding insult, frequently heard in the past but less so these days, is "berk", another "twit" synonym. I had a very religious friend at school who wouldn't use swear-words (he'd say "beep" instead), but he did use the word "berk" quite often, until the day we found out that it was Cockney rhyming-slang; "berk" being short for "Berkeley Hunt". He never used it thereafter.

[c.d.]

Ok. I get "wanker" but don't quite understand how "tosser" came to refer to someone who...well....you know.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Imagine the confusion when TWA Airline stewardesses used to ask passengers if they would like some TWA coffee or some TWA tea.

c.d.

[Mayerling]

"Twat" I had heard of. But only due to the female biological reason.

I remember an old "Mad Magazine" quote of so-called cockney: "It's crackers to give a rozer a dropsey of snide." It was supposed to mean: "It's crazy to pay a cop off in phony money!" It was almost as good as a Mad Magazine quote from a so-called game called "Forty nine man Squammish" where before the second quarter the Captain of one team had to say (in Spanish) "Mi tio es enferme, pero el camino es verde!" ("My uncle is sick, but the highway is green!").

By the way, when Sir William Gilbert wrote the libretto (for Sullivan) of "Ruddygore" or "Ruddigore", many nice people did not like the title because "Ruddy" reminded them of "Bloody". Gilbert got disgusted by this, and semi-seriously suggested changing the name to "Kensington Gore, or Not As Good as the Mikado"!

[c.d.]

I don't understand Cockney rhyming slang. Can an individual make it up himself on the spot or does it have to be agreed upon beforehand by a number of people?

c.d.

[Sam Flynn]

I don't understand Cockney rhyming slang. Can an individual make it up himself on the spot or does it have to be agreed upon beforehand by a number of people?

Each one must have started life as the invention of an individual but, if sufficiently memorable, it would catch on and eventually become part of the canon of slang expressions. Although some Cockney rhyming slang terms go way back to the early Victorian era, others are being added to the lexicon all the time. Recent examples might be "Ruby Murray = curry", "Vera Lynn = gin", "Barney Rubble = trouble", and "Pete Tong = wrong" (e.g. "it's all gone a bit Pete Tong").

[c.d.]

Hello Sam,

Thanks for that explanation. It seems rather odd and quite complicated to us Yanks but then again we here across the pond are a simple people.

c.d.

[Pcdunn]

It's all in the ear of the listener

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglopheni...ont-understand

c.d.

Good link. I think "tosser" is about the equivalent of our "jerk" (which is a milder version of the original "jerkoff").

I remember when the British sci-fi comedy "Red Dwarf" came over here, American fans equated "snog" with "smeg", until the warning went out that the latter word was much dirtier in meaning.

[GUT]

I was told once that TWIT was an acronym for That's What I Thought, ie too dumb to know the real truth.

Now maybe I'm a twit for not knowing if that's true or not, but I always thought it was a good story.

They also used to say a twit was a pregnant goldfish and as goldfish don't get pregnant (they lay eggs) a twit doesn't excuse, not does a twit's intelligence.