Flowery Insults: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}▼

== [[Comic Books]] ==▼

* [[Tintin|Captain Haddock]] is the best known user of this in the [[French Belgian Comic Books|Bande Dessinee]] genre. See [http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/lists/curses.html here] for alphabetically-sorted examples. "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!" ("Mille millions de mille milliards de mille sabords!") is probably the most iconic one.▼

== Misc ==▼

* A Jewish one:▼

{{quote|May you live in a hundred houses, and may each have a hundred rooms, and may each room have a hundred corners, and may you be thrown from corner to corner!}}▼

** A similar one, not sure if I heard it somewhere or just made it up:▼

{{quote|May you have a hundred relatives, and may they all give you socks on your birthday!}}▼

** Here are some more:▼

{{quote|May you turn into a chandelier, so that you can hang from the ceiling all day and burn at night!▼

May every tooth in your head but one fall out, and that one ache! }}▼

* A Chinese one (which actually probably originated in the U.S.): "May you live in interesting times."▼

* Classical Arabic provides a large number of these. You see, more direct options for insults are notably absent; the ancient Arabs put a high value on poetry, and the language handed down from generation to generation is a high-class, literary/poetic tongue. Pre-Islamic poetry even made an art of insult poetry, called ''Hijaa''', which could get quite creative indeed.<ref>One poem involves seeming to ''praise'' the insultee in the first half of each line, but noting in the second half "And [this letter] is actually [this other letter]," turning each "compliment" into a grave insult.</ref> On the other hand, the various kinds of colloquial Arabic spoken on streets across the Arab world includes an arsenal of vulgarity and obscenity to rival that of any other language, with a particular focus on attacks on one's parentage--most especially on one's [[Your Mom|mother]]--and (for men) implications of being a passive homosexual ("catching", not "pitching"). For comparison:▼

** A typical Classical Arabic insult: You have the right, and may all your wishes come true.▼

** A typical colloquial Arabic insult: Your mother's [[Country Matters|cunt]], you son of a filthy whore!▼

*** This isn't to say, however, that Arabs have lost the knack for flowery insults. Classical Arabic--or rather its updated edition, Modern Standard Arabic--still thrives, and literary types are still quite good at creatively insulting one another in it. Additionally, some groups of Arabs have the old-fashioned floweriness: "A thousand dicks in your religion" is not Classical Arabic, but rather Palestinian.▼

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_16275_the-9-most-devastating-insults-from-around-world.html This is a goldmine for the Real Life section.]▼

* May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits, and may your arms be too short to scratch.▼

* "May the [[Body Horror|Protocaliphora fly]] lay eggs in your testicles weekly." (Protocaliphora is a real genus of fly, but these flies [[Did Not Do the Research|lay their eggs in birds, not humans.]])▼

== [[Real Life]] ==▼

* [[Teddy Roosevelt]] once said of President McKinley that he had "no more backbone than a chocolate eclair".▼

* Former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating is still revered as having possessed one of the sharpest tongues ever wielded in the halls of parliament. His insults weren't all flowery gems (he could regularly be openly coarse and was often downright ''savage''), but a number of them were practically works of art. A collection of some of his best can be found [http://www.webcity.com.au/keating/ here.]▼

{{quote|'''Paul Keating:''' I was implying that the Honorable Member for Wentworth was like a lizard on a rock - alive, but looking dead.}}▼

* [[Ludwig Van Beethoven]] had a good one when one of his patrons, a Prince, complained about his work: "Prince, what you are is merely by accident of birth."▼

* When the [[Spoonerism]] had first become popularized, a politician in the British parliament used the opportunity to [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|get some crap past the radar]] against his opponent, saying, "Sir, you are a shining wit. I am sorry, that was a spoonerism."▼

* The ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|amazing]]'' [[wikipedia:Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks|Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks]] to Sultan Mehmed IV. When the nicest thing they call you is "Lucifer's secretary", you know they're not screwing around.▼

* [[Mark Twain]] - "I didn't go to his funeral, but I sent a letter saying I approved of it."▼