Short words often have long histories, and can be pitfalls for the unwary trans-Atlantic traveller. Here is a brief look at some of the byways of the English language on both sides of the Atlantic. Usage and abusage, you might say.
This is a word with Old High German and Norse origins, meaning buttocks or anus and used by Brits. Moderately vulgar and not used much, although it still appears in the phrase can't be arsed which is a more vulgar form of 'can't be bothered'.
It is also used in the phrase get your arse in gear which does not mean 'get dressed' as one might think, but 'hurry up', and in the phrase get your arse over here which is fairly self-explanatory.
Arse over tit, arse over apex, arse over tip or arse about are all phrases which describe a spectacular prattfall.
Bizzarely, a short-arse is someone with short legs. Go figure.
To arse about can also mean to play the fool, and a silly arse used to be a silly fool. However before WW1 southern English usage gave a long 'a' to the word 'ass' meaning donkey, which made it indistinguishable from 'arse' in spoken English.
Arse is not recognised by Microsoft's US English Spell-checker.
Donkey to the English; backside to the Americans. Nowadays pronounced with a short 'a' in both languages. Small ones are better than large ones, so that is appropriate.
Testes.
Something which is a balls-up is an error or a mistake. Someone who shows a lack of testicular fortitude doesn't have the balls, or the nerve, to do something.
If you give someone a balling out you criticise them loudly, but this is probably a misspelling of bawl.
Balls can be busted, and the phrase busting my balls is heavily used in American gangster films such as "Goodfellas" and "Casino" where it seems to equate to winding somone up. This highlights another difference between American and British usage; in Britain the phrase is used to mean 'trying very hard at something' in much the same way as a Brit might say busting a gut.
Ballsy means 'feisty'.
William the Conqueror's parents were not married, and before 1066 he was known as 'William the Bastard'. After 1066 the Anglo Saxons he conquered would probably still have called him 'William the Bastard' for quite different reasons.
One theory of its etymology says that it comes from the French word 'bast' as in 'fils de bast' meaning son of the packsaddle, which compares with the British English usage of someone being 'born the wrong side of the blanket' or being 'the son of a gun'. Another connects it with the Old Frisian for marriage, and Old English for bind.
Brits will say that something like the weather, or a sports result is a complete bastard as well as calling someone, usually male, a bastard if they have been particularly unpleasant.
In the Midlands, and elsewhere in England the word is sometimes gentrified to 'Bar Steward'. And the classic word difference between British and Australian usage is that the Australians use the word bastard as a term of affection. It really has to be spat out with pure vitriol to be taken any other way. To such an extent that it is very seldom used as an insult.
The poet Robert Graves wrote a very odd little book called 'Lars Porsena, or The Future of Swearing and Improper Language'. Writing in the 1920s, he claimed that there was an definite class difference in the use of the swearwords bastard and bugger. He claimed that in the working-class people might well be sensitive about illegitimacy, but were often unfamiliar with homosexuality, and so bastard was a mortal insult and bugger was a much milder term. The severity was reversed in the upper-classes, who had nice traceable bloodlines and a boarding-school education. He claimed that bugger was a much more serious insult in upper-class circles, where people were more likely to believe it.
A bitch is a female dog of any age, but the word bitch is often used as a female form of bastard. So although bitch and bastard have different meanings, their usage is very similar. The word has Middle and Old English origins.
Bitch is used to mean 'subordinate', in prisons, often used in relationships about power.
There are a large number of sayings that begin 'Life's a bitch' including 'Life's a bitch and then you die'. This is countered by the saying 'Life's a virgin, if it was a bitch it would be too easy'. In 1906 is the first record of usage of the phrase 'the bitch-goddess, success'.
One familiar American usage is to call someone a son of a bitch; Jack Nicholson is reported as saying that his mother was able to call him a son of a bitch with no detectable irony.
To bitch about something is to complain or whinge about it. To bitch something up is to mess it up, though something is IS bitched up, it is not A bitch-up.
British English word for testicles, with respectable Middle and Old English origins.
The use and abuse of the word bollocks (bollox or bollix) is probably worth a page of its own.
But here goes:
Bollocks means rubbish or nonsense, as in that is complete bollocks. Something that is bolloxed-up is a mess. Simple enough, you might think.
However something which is the bollocks is great. This is short for the dog's bollocks which is sometimes paraphrased to 'the pup's parts', or 'the mutt's nuts', and so on. Why canine testicles should be so wonderful is a moot point. There is a legend that in the 1950s construction kits like Meccano would be sold in boxes of various sizes. The list of contents which came with the standard size box would be headed 'Box, Standard' (which elided into 'bog standard' when spoken) and the larger box was the 'Box, Deluxe' which was spoonerised into the 'dog's bollocks'. This is such a satisfying explanation for two common forms of British English usage that one really wants it to be true.
A Bollocking on the other hand, is a severe dressing down or ticking off. The reason for this is mercifully unclear.
Bollock has an alternative meaning which is so non-vulgar as to be quite amusing. Specifically, a bollock is a pulley-block at the head of a topmast, otherwise known as a bullock block. This was used to great effect to prevent the Sex Pistols' album "Never Mind the Bollocks" from being censored. A refreshing example of the legal system grabbing hold of the wrong reason and using it to do the right thing.
Finally, if a Brit will say bollock-naked and Americans will say butt-naked. Why Brits verify nudity from the front while Americans verify it from the rear is anyone's guess.
Literally 'one who commits buggery' which is anal sex. Bugger derives from Bulgaria and the Bogomils. These were originally a heretic Christian sect who were stigmatised as sodomites.
Section twelve of the 1956 sexual offences act refers to buggery. According to this, buggery is sexual intercourse between males or between male and female in an 'unnatural manner', or between male or female with an animal in any manner whatsoever.
Bugger is often used affectionately, as in 'lucky bugger', 'jammy bugger', 'flash bugger', 'old bugger' and so on, and is sometimes softened to 'beggar'.
A relatively new word, making its first appearance in the 14th Century, but put to good use by Shakespeare. In "Measure for Measure" Escalus asks Pompey what his second name is. 'Bum, Sir' replies Pompey. To which Escalus replies 'Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great.' (They don't tell 'em like that any more. Thank goodness).
In Britain it means bottom, or backside, and is more acceptable than arse. A book was published in the late 1990s called "Does my Bum look big in this?" (Not a good question to ask, since you probably know the answer already). A bummer is something which is really annoying.
In America it means tramp or hobo and the Americans call a bad deal a bum's rush.
The Brits will use bum as a verb to mean borrow or beg as in 'can I bum a fag off anyone?' Which is a question only a Brit could ask.
An abbreviation of clitoris, which probably has the oldest origin of any of the words in the Short Guide, coming as it does from Greek. Most often used in informal situations.
'Certificates in Computer Literacy and Information Technology' are CLAIT Certificates. Usually, the initial letters of conjunctions like 'and' aren't included in acronyms, though it does show a certain sense of humour - the reason why they are not ITCL Certificates is not clear.
A Middle and Old English word, and one of the many vulgarities for the penis. It is always amusing to note when people use rooster or cockerel instead of cock in general conversation. Cockneys appear to have both terms in mind when they say Wotcher cock, which comes from the term 'cock sparrow' ( pronounced 'sparrah'). It is a general term for a man, although cock sparrow was usually saved for small boys. It has been used for about 300 years.
A cock-up is a mistake. This is the same usage as a fuck-up or foul-up, although apparently its origins are from beer making. If the batch went bad, they turned the cock (ie tap, or faucet) up to drain the barrel.
An English word meaning excrement, with two possible origins. The word has links to the Middle English for chaff, and the Middle Dutch 'to tear off' which is more suitable than ever in these days of velvet-soft toilet tissue.
The second possible origin is the Victorian plumber named Thomas Crapper who gave the world the syphonic flush: British Standard 7357 (1990) still requires that 'Cisterns shall be supplied with an efficient flushing apparatus of the valveless syphonic type which prevents the waste of water.' Crapper left his name not only on toilet cisterns, but also on manhole covers across southern England. And thus a crapper is a toilet, and not the person who uses it.
Crap is vulgar, but less so than shit. It can be used to mean 'stuff' or 'things'. Like shit, it may also be used as an adjective: a Brit might describe something as being crap or crappy, in the same way they might describe something slightly worse as shit or shitty.
Crap is obsolete slang for money, which is presumably the origin of the Craps game. So an American might throw a crap, that is they might throw a seven while trying to make a point. These American usages leaves Brits either sniggering or confused or both.
Crap is a noun rather than a verb, and Brits will have a crap, except when they are afraid, then they are crapping it.
Confusingly 'crapulence' (from the Latin for being drunk) is sickness caused by heavy drinking. However it often also involves toilets.
A word which is recognized by the MS US English Spell-checker, it has its origins in Middle English and (appropriately enough) Middle Low German.
The c-word is the ultimate four-letter word in British English, the final media taboo, which started to disappear in the late 1990s in the UK. It is used with increasing frequency in the media, albeit in arts programs or dramas on British tv, and in features or review sections of the broadsheets. It will occasionally appear within a quote in a news item in the British press. The first use of the word in a UK TV drama was in "Mosley", a drama about the rise and fall of the British facist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. This was first shown on Channel 4 in the late 1990s. And "Cunt" is the title of rather a good novel by Stewart Home about the break down of a writer as he rather badly loses the plot, both literally and creatively. This was first published in the UK in 1999.
The word has good Shakespearian usage, though even he had to get his plays approved by the Lord Chamberlain, and was therefore discreet. Hamlet asks whether he can lie in Ophelia's lap, 'I mean, my head upon your lap?' and then says 'Do you think I meant country matters?' and follows up with 'It is a fair thought to lie between maids' legs'. Ophelia answers non-committally to most of this.
Some Scots are known to use the c-word in a couple of other ways: ya cunt aye! denotes strong agreement, and And what have you got to say about it ... cunt? is used when the speaker has finished, and is expecting a response. However you are strongly advised not to try these two without suitable supervision.
Threadneedle Street in the City of London is a euphemism for its former name which was Gropecunte Lane; it used to be one of the many places where whores plied their trade, and is now the site of the Bank of England. Another euphemism, perhaps.
There is a story in Oxford that one of the religious societies in England's oldest university was the Cambridge University New Testament Society, though that has the whiff of urban legend about it. And more recently, there is a rumour that the former Newcastle Polytechnic had got to the stage of printing their letterheads with the name City University, Newcastle upon Tyne before noticing what they were doing.1
Other Universities can also be hotbeds of a certain inspired madness. Late in 2000, feminists in Penn State in the USA held a 'Cuntfest' with the stated objective of reclaiming the word, which according to Inga Muscio in her book "Cunt: A Declaration of Independence", stems from words that were 'either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of goddesses' names'. (Though how that squares with what the dictionaries say is not entirely clear). Not surprisingly, the local community did not see the event in quite the same way.
The word of abuse Berk has its origins in cockney rhyming slang, and is short for 'Berkshire Hunt'.
A variant on Cunt. Clearly seen in cunnilingus. As it were. Not recognized by the US English spell checker.
Another vulgarity for the penis. Also used in dick-head which means eejit or stupid and socially inept person.
Dick is common army slang as in so you got dicked for first stag then eh? This means 'so you had the misfortune to be the first person chosen for sentry duty?'
In America this is an innocuous word and means 'buttocks'; Americans call a belt purse a fanny-pack or fanny-sack. (The Brits call them 'Bum-bags'). But in the UK the word fanny really is not used at all, and where it is used it denotes the vagina. Hence the famous fictional whore "Fanny Hill".
In the 1970s, there was a pioneering all-female American rock band called "Fanny". They were originally called "Wild Honey" which is almost as suggestive, and they adopted their new name on the recommendation of George Harrison, without being aware of the British usage. In 1970 Fanny covered Cream's "Badge", and this song earned it air-play for their self-titled debut LP.
Anthony Trollope's mother, Frances, wrote a highly critical book called "The Domestic Manners of the Americans" which was published on both sides on the Atlantic. The Americans were rather non-plussed since they simply could not believe that the Fanny Trollope was not a pseudonym.
There is also the phrase sweet Fanny Adams which is sometimes abbreviated to sweet FA and extended again to sweet Fuck All. Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old child who was murdered and dismembered in Alton, Hertfordshire, in 1867. Her grave is still there. At around the same time the British Navy started preserving chopped mutton in tins, and the sailors - always an uncouth lot - described this as sweet Fanny Adams which eventually came to mean 'nothing of any good at all'. An unhappy epitaph to a nasty story.
Fanny is also a generic term for a slightly featherbrained woman.
From the Middle English for 'wriggle' or the Old French for 'rub'. Sometimes used as a euphemism for 'Fuck', at other times used to mean 'masturbate'; usually only seen as a gerundive (or verbal adjective) 'frigging'. The Sex Pistols did a version of "The Good Ship Venus" with the chorus 'Frigging in the rigging 'cos there's fuck all else to do'.
Although this sounds like the most Anglo-Saxon of all Anglo-Saxon words, the origin of this word meaning 'sexual intercourse' is actually rather obscure.
Originally, this was a quite acceptable word! It was recorded in a dictionary in 1598 (John Florio's A World of Words). It is remotely derived from the Latin 'futuere' and Old German 'ficken/fucken' meaning 'to strike or penetrate', which had the slang meaning 'to copulate'. Eric Partridge, a famous etymologist, said that the German word was related to the Latin words for pugilist, puncture, and prick. There are also clearer links to Dutch where 'fokken' means breed and is applied to cattle, and to a Swedish dialect work 'fokken' which has the English meaning. In Afrikaans it is spelled 'fok'.
The word, which entered English in the late 15th century, became more rare in print in the 18th century when it became a vulgar term. It was even banned from the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1960, Grove Press (in the US) won a court case permitting it to print the word legally for the first time in centuries -- in D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (written in 1928).
There is a legend that the old name for the crime of rape was 'Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge', and part of the punishment was that an abbreviation of the crime would be branded on the perpetrators head. Hence, people with 'F. U. C. K.' on their head were known to be rapists, so being called a fuck or a fuckhead was equivalent to being called a rapist. A similar story is that during the time of the plague when it was necessary to increase the population a royal injunction was issued telling the common folk to 'Fornicate Under Command of the King.'
Bizzarely, fukt means humidity in mainstream Swedish. There is a sign 20 kilometers from Stockholm's Arlanda airport which says 'tid 13.25' or whatever time it is that you drive past, 'temp -10°' or however cold it is, and 'fukt 76%', which is a useful statistic to know about the people in the country you are visiting. You can also buy Fukt Creme in some shops in Sweden, although (disappointingly) this is a hand cream and not a lubricant. 2
It is one of the most versatile words in the English language, and can be put to use as an expletive, an adjective, a noun or a verb, as demonstrated by the army truck driver faced with a broken axle who said: Fuck! The fucking fucker's fucked. None of the other words in this short guide can be put to such varied use. It is an exceptionally satisfying word to say (besides being a highly enjoyable thing to do).
D H Lawrence's book "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was the first serious (ie non-pornographic) book in English to use the word accurately and in context and was famously banned for over thirty years until the Lady Chatterly trial in 1963.
Philip Larkin uses the word in the opening lines of one of his poems, writing one of those sentences which is simple, lucid and which cannot possibly be expressed in any other way:
'They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do'
Kenneth Tynan the enfant terrible of mid 20th century British cultural criticism was the first person to use the word on British TV, on the BBC no less, sparking a major and significant debate in the British press. Everyone could see what the articles were about, their eyes were drawn by the asterisks.
Norman Mailer used the euphemism fug in "The Naked and the Dead", and when Dorothy Parker met him at a party, she said, 'So you're the young man who can't spell fuck?'
Eff is the standard British English euphemism, and can be seen in the phrase effing an blinding to describe someone who swears a lot. ('Blinding' probably refers to an archaic usage 'God Blind Me' still heard in 'Cor Blimey'). The Americans have the same usage, but spell it f.
There is an American usage Cluster Fuck as in 'Cluster Bomb' to describe a large number of inter-related fuck-ups or mistakes. On the other hand the Americans do not use the phrase for fuck's sake, which Brits will use instead of 'for God's sake' because that would be vulgar and might offend.
Well fucked can either mean 'in a bad way' or - less frequently - 'sexually satiated'.
A fuckwit is someone whose brains appear completely addled.
The F of the f-word also appears in various quasi-military acronyms most of which can be traced back to and may even have been spawned by the second world war. There is FUBBED-up - 'Fucked Up Beyond Belief'; FUBAR - 'Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'; FUUUNDY - 'Fucked Up, Not Dead Yet' - as used on the notes of patients in hospiiitals who were, well... FUNDY. There is also: NFW - 'No Fucking Way'; and SNAFU - 'Situation Normal, All Fucked Up'. This last one is reputed to be the origin of naff, which was popularised in Britain in the 1970s programme Porridge, and reportedly used by Princess Anne. 3
In 1999, Conservative Future - the youth wing of the Conservative Party - started using the logo 'CFUK'. One wonders which particular cfukwit thought that was a good idea, especially as it got them into trouble with French Connection UK, who brought us the ubiquitous 'fcuk'. It is strange to think that there may be an entire generation who, like Norman Mailer, cannot spell for fuck.
This word is connected with get but in the sense of spawn or offspring, as in the old verb to beget. Your get are your (probably illegitimate) offspring. In the northwest of England get is still used in the way that git is in the rest of the country.
Alf Garnett in "Till Death Us Do Part" used to refer his Liverpudlian son in law4 , as a scouse git. Git is only a very very mild form of abuse (certainly in the UK anyway), and it can be used affectionately with people, calling someone a git as a real form of abuse is more likely to encourage them to laugh at you.
In some usages this rhymes with cringe, in others with singer and singing. This is rumoured to come from a word for female genitalia, and is suspiciously close to the word 'mingy' which is a synonym for and which rhymes with 'stingy'.
To ming (hard g) is to be completely off, like college food: it can also be used to describe rotting dustbins, or just to indicate that something smells. Someone who is a complete minger is someone who is too revolting to consider dating. In some parts of the UK it is not used for girls: in others it is.
This appears to be a Scottish word which has drifted south, getting hipper on the way, and the model Jordan described herself with deprecation but no apparent irony as minging on TV.
Graham Sourness described the referee's performance in Blackburn's 2002 cup tie with Middlesbrough as minging; and a new law that is unpopular could utterly ming, so it seems that some usages are similar to the American usages for suck.
This is considerably stronger and more insulting than fucker, and can be used in much the same way.
Despite sounding very Oedipal, this does not have Freudian connotations. Motherfucker was coined by African slaves. They used it to describe the slave owners, who often raped or otherwise had sex with their mothers. Simple as that.
This presumably originally meant the glans penis, but is now used to denote the whole organ. It has also become a verb in the UK - as in to (k)nob someone. And there is of course the abusive term (k)nobhead.
This is another word which was revived in the sitcom "Till Death Us Do Part". Its origins are in the word pillicock, which is northern English slang for 'penis', and which compares with the shorter and more southern cock. The earliest usage recorded in the OED describes someone getting their feet wet and saying: "Mi pilkoc pisseth on mi schone." 5
Pillock is no longer considered obscene. Mo Mowlem was filmed on TV in a shopping precinct during the 2001 general election campaign telling somone wearing an odd shop uniform that they looked 'a complete pillock'. Everyone smiled, possibly with relief that Ms Mowlem, who has a reputation for using short words, used one of the longer and more repeatable ones.
These words have Latin and French origins.
Are you ready for this?
The Scot who has spent the evening in the pub walks home pished, and may well take a pish against a wall on his way. If the wall belongs to an English person the English person may be pissed off about that, unless he is also pissed, having been out on the piss with the Scot or at some other piss-up, in which case he may join # him pissing against the wall.
If the wall belongs to an American he will be pissed when he sees the Brits going to the bathroom against his property. Unless he is himself drunk, in which case he may join them and take a leak himself.
Confused? Pissed off? Just lie back and enjoy the language.
Pissing it against the wall is also used to mean throwing money away - presumably on the same principle that you don't buy bad beer, just rent it.
Penis. As Jerry Sadowitz said discussing television censorship: 'It's alright to say I prick my finger, but not to say I finger my prick'.
A 17th and 18th century word for the female sexual organs. No whorehouse is recorded as using the slogan 'kink or quim' but it is nice to think they could.
Not recognized by the US spell checker.
This word has a dozen or so definitions, and comes from the Old Norse for beard. One of the definitions is a British usage meaning the sexual act. You can shag, you can shag someone, you can have a shag. Someone might also be a good shag.
One of the more innocent definitions is 'Either of two marine birds (Phalacrocorax aristotelis or P. punctatus) of Europe and North A frica, related to the cormorant.' So you could say That bird's a lovely shag in perfect innocence.
'Shag' is also a kind of coarse tobacco, so it should be possible to go into a tobacconist and ask the person behind the counter to give you their best shag without being arrested.
The usage was probably dying out somewhat before being revived by the film "Austin Powers 2 - The Spy Who Shagged Me" which delighted British audiences for its title as well as for its nostalgic and ironic look at the 1970s. In 1987, the American soul group The Tams had a Top 30 UK hit with a song called "There Ain't Nothing Like Shaggin'". They were probably rather puzzled to hear that what they regarded as an innocent little ditty about a dance craze was having trouble getting airplay in Britain. And you would think that Americans in the entertainment industry would have learned to check the titles of their movies and indeed the names of their bands and songs for international innuendo. Mind you, it must be tempting to mislead them if you are the person who they ask for the advice, as demonstrated by George Harrison and Fanny.
Both a noun and a verb, meaning excrement and to excrete, and also used an adjective. Shite is a British English form, particularly used in Scotland.
Now this is a true Anglo Saxon word and an example of the great Anglo Saxon vowel shift, because the past participle of shit is shat (the 'i' becomes an 'a') and not 'shitted', as one might expect.
This word has a long history of use by Chaucer who describes the hypocrisy of the church with the phrase 'shitten shepherd and clene sheep' in the "General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales".
In the 18th Century Jonathan Swift describes the disillusion of an obsessed voyeur called Strephon in the following lines:
Thus finishing his grand survey,
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!
Bullshit is rubbish or nonsense, and from that we get the back-formation 'bull'. People will sometimes describe themselves as a mushroom within an organisation if they feel that they are kept in the dark and fed bullshit.
Smeg is short for smegma, which is defined with delicacy as 'a sebaceous seretion, especially that under the prepuce'. It is from the Greek for soap, which is worrying in its own way, and it is also known as knobcheese.
Smeg, smegging and smeg-head were popularised by the tv show "Red Dwarf", where it was intended to suggest obscenity while still being broadcast by the BBC.
Creating new obscenities is difficult, and the writers of "Red Dwarf" also tried to use the word 'goit' (as in 'you stupid goit') as another swear word. They are said to have dropped it because it sounded too medical.
The famous and probably apocryphal epitaph says, 'Under this sod, lies another'. Sod means turf, and is an abbreviation for Sodomite. Sodomy is anal sex, and the word Sodomite refers to the population of the Old Testament city Sodom which was destroyed by God because of the sinful ways of its inhabitants. He destroyed its twin town Gomorrah at the same time, and it is tempting to wonder what the people of Gomorrah did to be ranked with the Sodomites.
Schoolboys also used to snigger at the Good King Wenceslas verse which goes:
In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed
This was the word which brought about the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. The Marquis of Queensbury was the father of Wilde's young lover Bosie, and in a rage he accused Wilde on paper of being a 'Somodite' (not only was he narrow minded, he also could not spell). Bosie encouraged Wilde to sue for libel, but the truth is no libel and when it became clear that Wilde was indeed a sodomite, he was in turn tried and jailed for it.
Connected to the Middle English and Old English word for teat, hence its meaning of breasts. British men will say that someone or something gets on my tits which means it annoys them. In Britain someone who is a tit is a fool. If something goes tits-up it has gone horribly wrong. This is similar to belly-up which may refer to the submissive pose of an animal surrendering in a fight, or it may simply refer to something falling over.
On the other hand, in the US tits are cool, so an American will say something is the tits and that means it the coolest thing in a usage similar to it's the [dog's] bollocks in British English.
The craze for acronyms during WW2 produced EGYPT which stood for: Ever Guard Your Precious Tits, which isn't bad advice, anyway.
Toss off does not mean 'go away' as most '- off' usages do. Tossing off is male masturbation, although you may also and completely innocuously toss off a drink, or an article about words, or anything else which you complete in a rush.
Tosser is a British English usage, and is almost unknown in South Africa and the USA. It is used so mildly in the UK to mean an eejit or an irritating and stupid person that South Africans or Americans working with Brits can use it without realizing its more offensive meaning, which can be entertaining for the Brits around them. It is milder than wanker but an exact synonym for both usages.
This comes from an Old Norse word for cut or slit, hence it's modern meaning of vagina.
Twat is widely used in the UK as a slightly more expressive form of 'twit'6 or 'idiot', and it seems likely that most of the people using it do not know what it means. They are in good company. Robert Browning clearly didn't when he wrote the following lines in "Pippa Passes":
Then owls and bats
Cowls and twats
Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.
However it is probable that he was misled by a poem printed around 1660 when that well known and scurrilous poet Anon stated:
They talked of his having a Cardinal's Hat,
They'd send him as soon an Old Nun's Twat.
Which appears to be why Browning thought it meant a piece of nun's clothing, specifically a wimple; and is a clear lesson to us all to check words we don't understand in a dictionary, and not to infer meaning from context. Though if they had offered him a Policeman's Helmet 7 you would have thought that even Browning would have realised what was up.
Wanking is male masturbation. Wank is a word which is almost unknown in the USA. A wanker is an eejit or a stupid and offensive person, similar to the American jerk-off. Still, different strokes for different folks.
Wankered is an adjective used by Brits to mean extremely drunk. And wankstain is used as a more forceful sneer at a complete dork.
Sadly, the collective noun for 'bankers' is not, as the joke has it, a 'wunch'.
Yet another word for the penis.
This British English word had audiences sniggering in the aisles of cinemas throughout the UK when the first trailers were shown for the film "Free Willy". On the other hand it is tempting to wonder whether or not the celebrated actor and rapper Will Smith had taken advice on the way in which British audiences might interpret the title of his 1997 album "Big Willie Styl". It is hard to imagine he would actually have objected to the misunderstanding.
Willie is essentially an innocent playground word, and there was delighted laughter across the land when Brian Johnson announced in a Cricket commentary on Radio 3 that 'The batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willie'.
If something is scary it gives you the willies.
Something that goes tits-up is a Cock-up or a Fuck-upmeaning a 'spectacular mistake', why the different usages require different verbs is unclear.
A piss-up as already noted is a drunken party or pub-crawl.
This is a subject which fills books, and has a word all of its own: what you have been reading is a brief outline of English scatolinguistics.
One of the things which becomes clear is that usage varies widely from country to country, and within countries. In one place a word may be a term of affection, in another a clear and direct term of abuse. And these words provide a potted social history of the speakers of the English Language.
The wise avoid troublesome words; others prefer to be like children in a playground chanting:
Poo! Pee! Piss!
Wee! Willie! Bum!
However, used appropriately and with panache, these short words add depth, colour and point to the language.
1: Of course, this is a fairly easy game to play: "Federal University of Cape Kennedy" and "Saddam Hussein Institute of Technology" are a couple of tempting but apocryphal examples. Back
2: Sweden and Denmark are a rich source of rude brand names. As well as fukt creme you can find cat-food called pussi favorit, chocolate bars called plopps and käck, and candies called spunk. These latter come in two flavours, wine-gum flavour, and salted anchovy flavour, which gives rise to the eternal dilemma, namely whether to spit or swallow. Back
3: In the 1970s Princess Anne was famously reported as telling reporters to 'Naff off'. One cannot help wondering if in those pre-Tynan days the word she used actually began with an 'f' instead of ending with it. Back
4: Played by Anthony Booth, Tony Blair's father in law, and father of Cherie. Back
6: That pesky vowel shift again, perhaps. Back
7: British slang for the foreskin
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