A precisely aimed insult often hits home with far greater impact than a generic catch-all slur+.
Although “retard” is both satisfying and functional in conveying the sense of mental deficiency when describing a fellow citizen of the cube farm, it’s always been a little bit too vague for my liking. This is probably why I’ve taken to using more accurate terms:
An idiot has a mental age of about two and possesses no capacity for empathy whatsoever. Idiots are extremely demanding and require help for basic tasks like eating, bottom-wiping and project planning. Basically, idiocy is a compulsory prerequisite for senior management;
Your average imbecile, however, has a mental age of between 2 and 8 and is able to follow simple instructions, but requires constant supervision and is typically incapable of initiative or independent thought;
And finally, a moron has a mental age of between 8 and 12 and is able to function with a reasonable degree of independence. Nonetheless, morons generally fail to develop the necessary social skills to fit into a normal society. Most of them end up on the internet proving Godwin’s Law over and over and over again.
+ The one exception to this rule (in South Africa and most of south London, for that matter) is “doos”. It is essentially the Chuck Norris of insults.
First!
I bow to your ability to come here hours after me and post ahead of me..”Bows”
makes me your minion
Behold the Man.
Let’s start this the right way…FIRST..
then…my husband has an “Idiot” for the Executive Director position where he works..even though this Idiot works for the Dr.s he is trying to push them around and tell them how to run their office time with the patients.
Plus.as your “average Imbecile” I was over qualified for the job of Executive Director..I informed them that I was perfectly capable of wiping my own ass.
Yeah, I’m afraid the brown ceiling is one of those sad realities of the corporate world.
I suspect the recipients of these insults won’t appreciate the grading system – you may have to hand out cards as well.
I was thinking something similar. You’ll probably have to read the cards to them, though.
Maybe I could illustrate the system with diagrams?
What about a Doofus?
No thanks, we have enough of those.
I throw around moron all the time. Apparently, it’s not insulting enough. I’m too damn nice! I knew it!
Strong, too. Moron tossing does sound like fun, though.
my personal favourite is C**tmonkey.
I see your monkey, and raise you a Boondock Saints…
“You insignific**t…..”
My god, it’s full of stars!
I see you Boondock Saints and raise you a clusterfucker
I see your ‘clusterfucker’, and raise you the Afrikaans language, which by default makes any translation of an english insult infinitely better….as in ‘komkolletjie’, a much improved version of ‘dickwad’.
I do apologise for contributing to this quickly degenerating thread…..
Yeah, what are you? Some kind of Nazi language supremicist?
No soup for you!
Yeah? Well it’s no good without bread anyway.
Is the moron a moron if he/she is being well compensated for working for an idiot? Shouldn’t that factor into it? I liked the Chuck Norris reference. So glad the U.S. could contribute that to the world’s vernacular.
Chuck Norris can kick a doos in the doos.
Look, Chuck is no Wikus van der Merwe, but he’s still pretty cool
if it wasn’t for idiots/imbeciles/retards, we wouldn’t have jobs.
Also, aaahhhhh ddduuhhh (my “spaced out” doesn’t translate very well over the intertubes)
That’s what YouTube is for.
Adding komkolletjie to my vocabulary. Of course i’ll be pronouncing “komkolletjie” is with a Texas accent so unsure of effectiveness.
“Learnin’ is fun!” GW Bush
It’s very much the thought that counts.
“We’re kicking ass!” – GW Bush
In the States we aren’t allowed to call people retards anymore, because of political correctness.
shut up, retard…
(and no, i didn’t get that memo)
There wasn’t a memo; they weren’t allowed to print the word “retard”. Also, the charades-based roadshow was a disaster.
I’m fond of eejit (Irish). And plonker (Norf Lundun). And ‘ya flamin’ gallah’ (Australia). Picking up international insults is one of the great pleasures of travel.
So true. The thing that terrifies me about travel is how it’s supposed to broaden your mind, but none of the brochures tell you how far you can go before it snaps.
Yes, Maslow has nothing on the idiot’s hierarchy.
Yeah, he always struck me as being a bit needy.
R-tard works for me, as do fuckwad, fuckwit, yo-yo and the ever popular doos.
With so many of the ‘wheel’s still spinning but the hamster’s dead’ types out there, we need to have enough terms to go around, and the politically correct ones just don’t really cut it!
Precisely. PC logic dicatates that it’s ok to insult someone, as long as you don’t hurt their feelings. WTF?
You left out ‘asshat’.
That encompasses almost all three.
M
Fun fact: cretin, retard, moron, imbecile, and idiot were all once acceptable – nay, respectable – descriptive terms. They only acquired their derogatory meaning later. Kind of like how “special” or “challenged” have been appropriated as insults now.
My go-to term is “douchebag”. Fits all and sundry.