Odd this day
Did you know, it’s the 34th anniversary of the day David Quantick and Steven Wells coined the word shitgibbon? (Well, kind of…)
We owe this vital — VITAL, I TELL YOU! — knowledge to Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer, who, like many of us, back in the heady, far-off days of 2017, was much taken with then-Pennsylvania-state-senator Daylin Leach’s hurling of the word at the entirely deserving Donald Trump:
(I can’t remember what he’s referring to there, but clearly it’s something to do with the difficulties inherent in having an aspiring fascist elected president of a democracy. Anyway…)
It’s important to point out that the word had earlier been directed at the same truly awful human being by a different Twitter user:
This is, yes, further evidence, as if such a thing were needed, that Scotland is a fine place, but also an illustration that traction on social media comes from numbers, and if your followers can be counted in tens of thousands, rather than thousands, as a result of your political status, your use of a catchy insult will garner attention.
Anyway, Ben Zimmer undertook some detective work. Really quite exhaustive detective work.
In an episode of Veep in 2012, for example, Senator Andrew Doyle called someone a “gold-plated fucking shitgibbon” — and it was this which led to the discovery of its true origin. David Quantick was a writer on Veep, and responsible for that line. When Zimmer blogged about it, Quantick came across it and commented. This (one way and another) led Zimmer to a website of scans of old copies of the New Musical Express, and specifically this page of the 13 January 1990 issue:
This is the important bit:
Strictly speaking, this may not be the first ever appearance of the word in print, because Quantick thinks he coined the phrase in 1988. And even if this is the first appearance, it’s not the day they wrote it, so I am using a certain amount of… poetic licence. This is the earliest documented sighting, though, and that’s something.
Anyway, it’s worth reading Zimmer’s whole article, because it’s fascinating, and he ultimately points out that this was the beginning of a trend in insults for
a monosyllablic expletive plus a trochee (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable)
These include ‘spunktrumpet’, ‘dickbiscuit’ and the overused ‘cockwomble’, and you can find out yet more about them on the Language Jones blog of social scientist Taylor Jones, which concludes: they’re best when the vowel sound is repeated.
In other words, ‘shit-piston’ and ‘spunk-puffin’, while not entirely successful, sound more plausible than, for example:
cock bookshelf, fart saucepan [and] dick pension.
Yes, we have all learned something important today, haven’t we? You really are most welcome.
