Olde English Insults

Here is a fun collection of Olde English insults.

* Bedswerver: adulterer

* Bobolyne: fool

* Cumberworld: someone who is so useless they just take up space.

* Dalcop: a particularly stupid person.

* dew-beater: a clumsy person

* dorbel: As well as being another name for a nincompoop, a dorbel is a petty, nit-picking teacher.

* drate-poke: An old English dialect word for someone who drawls or speaks indistinctly.

* fopdoodle: insignificant or foolish person.

* fustylugs: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this term for “a woman of gross or corpulent habit” is derived from fusty, in the sense of something that’s gone off or gone stale.

* fustilarian: someone who stubbornly wastes time on worthless things.

* gillie-wet-foot: An old Scots word for a swindling businessman, or someone who gets into debt and then flees.

* gnashgab: An 18th century northern English word for someone who only ever seems to complain.

* gobermouch: An old Irish word for a nosy, prying person who likes to interfere in other people’s business.

* klazomaniac: Someone who only seems able to speak by shouting.

* leasing-monger: A leasing is an old word for an untruth or falsehood, making a leasing-monger or a leasing-maker a habitual liar.

* loiter-sack: slacker, a lazy person.

* lubberworth: In the 16th century, lubberwort was the name of an imaginary plant that was supposed to cause sluggishness or stupidity, and ultimately came to be used as a nickname for a lethargic, fuzzy-minded person.

* muck-spout: A dialect word for someone who not only talks a lot, but who seems to constantly swear.

* mumblecrust: toothless beggar.

* quisby: In Victorian English, doing quisby meant shirking from work or lazing around. A quisby was someone who did just that.

* raggabrash: A disorganized or grubby person.

* rakefire: A visitor who outstays his or her welcome. Originally, someone who stays so late the dying coals in the fireplace would need to be raked over just to keep it burning.

* roiderbanks: Someone who lives beyond their means, or seems to spend extravagantly.

* saddle-goose: Saddling geese is a proverbially pointless exercise, so anyone who wastes their time doing it—namely, a saddle-goose—must be an imbecile.

* scobberlotcher: Probably derived from scopperloit, an old English dialect word for a vacation or a break from work, a scobberlotcher is someone who never works hard.

* skelpie-limmer: A badly-behaved child.

* smell-feast: Someone who turns up uninvited at a meal or party and expects to be fed.

* smellfungus: The name soon came to be used of any buzz-killing faultfinder—and in particular someone who always finds fault in the places they visit.

* snoutband: Someone who constantly interrupts a conversation, typically only to contradict or correct someone else.

* sorner: Sorning was the 16th century equivalent of mooching or sponging, and so a sorner is someone who unappreciatively lives off other people.

* stampcrab: a heavy-footed clumsy person.

* stymphalist: In Greek mythology, one of The Twelve Labors of Hercules was to destroy the Stymphalian birds, a flock of monstrous, man-eating birds with metal beaks and feathers, who produced a stinking and highly toxic guano. A Stymphalist is someone who smells just as unpleasant.

* tallowcatch: Another of Shakespeare’s inventions directed at the gross, womanizing knight Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1. It’s probably derived from “tallow ketch,” literally “a barrel of fat.”

* triptaker: A finicky, fault-finding pedant.

* wandought: A weak and ineffectual man.

* whiffle-whaffle: An indecisive, time-wasting ditherer.

* yaldson: A 15th century word literally meaning “the son of a prostitute.”