9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't
Get your mind into the gutter
Definition:
a common migratory black-throated finch (Spiza americana of the family Cardinalidae) of the central U.S.
Example Sentence:
On a recent visit to a Missouri prairie, I watched as two male Dickcissels (Spiza americana) waged daily war over a territorial disagreement. I suppose it was more a skirmish than a war, as tempers flared and feathers were ruffled, but at the end of the day no one was the worse for wear and, as is often the case with border disputes, nothing much had changed.
— W. Andrew Cox, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, December 2014
Note:
We could probably write an entire book about suggestive and/or rude-sounding common names for birds, including bustard, bushtit, and bogsucker. Some of these terms, as you would expect, evolved from words completely devoid of offensive connotations (bustard traces back to the Latin avis tarda, meaning “slow bird,” for example), but others—like dickcissel—are imitative, meant to represent the sounds made by our feathered friends. You can read (and hear) more about words for bird calls and songs in this article.
Definition:
endurance training in which a runner alternates periods of sprinting with periods of jogging
Example Sentence:
Other researchers use four-second intervals, and I have tried and enjoyed the 10-20-30 approach, which was pioneered by scientists in Copenhagen, during which you jog or otherwise exercise gently for 30 seconds, ramp up the effort for 20 seconds and then sprint for 10 seconds, before returning to the easy half-minute jog. But lately, I have settled into frequent fartleks. Swedish for speed play, fartlek workouts involve picking a goal, such as a tree or light pole up ahead, and speeding up until you reach it.
— Gretchen Reynolds, The New York Times, 10 Nov. 2021
Note:
Happily, and unlike dickcissel, the word fartlek does not have imitative origins. It’s actually a combination of two Swedish words: fart (meaning “speed” or “pace”) and lek (meaning “play” or “game”), and far be it from us to poke fun at the Swedes for their fart games.
Definition:
an outer garment worn to conceal untidy clothes
Example Sentence:
… those women that can purchase plads, need not bestow much upon other Cloaths, these coversluts being sufficient: those of the best sort that are very well habited in their modish silks, yet must wear a Plad over all for the credit of their Countrey…
— Edward Ward, A journey to Scotland giving a character of that country, the people and their manners (1699)
Note:
Who among us has not, in haste or horror, thrown a sweater over a rumpled t-shirt before heading out into public, or kept a coat on at a party after noticing a mustard stain on our blouse? This is a rhetorical question, of course, because we’ve all been grateful for coversluts at one time or another. That being said, you’d likely have a lot of explaining to do if you referred to your coverslut in polite company; although the slut in coverslut carries the oldest recorded (and still derogatory!) sense of that word—a woman who is careless, lazy, or untidy in her appearance or the cleanliness of her house—that is, er, not how most people use it today.
Definition:
a bass fiddle consisting of a string stretched on a pole and over a bladder and bowed with a notched stick
Example Sentence:
Such unusual instruments can be hard to handle. After a quick demonstration on the bumbass, [James] Kimball carefully set the instrument back in the corner, but it slowly leaned and fell over into the pile of papers and recordings that line his office floor. Fortunately, there was plenty to cushion the fall—the piles represent almost 40 years’ worth of research on folk music, specifically the old-time music from Rochester and the western New York region.
— Anna Reguero, The Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, 28 Feb. 2010
Note:
If someone brings their bumbass to a party, you know it’s going to be a good time. Wait—perhaps we should rephrase that. If someone brings their musical bumbass (also known as a bladder-and-string, among other names) to a party, you know it’s going to be a good time. If they bring the other kind of bumbass, “a pilotless airplane remote-controlled by radio signals,” you run the risk of having to help out when their drone inevitably gets stuck in a tree. The instrument sense of bumbass, for what it’s worth, is thought to be a combination of bum, a chiefly Scottish word for a constant humming noise, and bass.
Definition:
the clearing of wooded land for cultivation, or a parcel of cleared land
Example Sentence:
… an assart, is a great offence committed in the forest, by grubbing up the woods, coverts, and thickets, and making them plain as arable land, or the like…
— Nicolas Cox, The Gentleman’s Recreation (1686)
Note:
Assart is not what you might think at first. It’s not even what you might think at second—say, for instance, John Constable’s 1816 oil painting entitled “Two Donkeys.” It is, rather, a third thing, an old English legal term referring to the act of uprooting trees and brushy vegetation for agricultural purposes. Assart, while mostly obscure and historical now, can also be used as a verb. Truly, the history of the world since the dawn of agriculture is full of people running around assarting all over the place, for better and for worse.
Definition:
a flat-bottomed boat (such as a lighter); especially : a flat-bottomed boat or portable float used in building a floating temporary bridge
Example Sentence:
A pontoon doesn’t go as fast as a motor boat, but if you’re in the mood for a leisurely day, soaking up the sun, they’re just right.
— Lesley Chen, SFGate.com, 8 Aug. 2022
Note:
Pontoon may not sound prurient or scatological but the combination of its sounds—the plosive and the long double-o, make it reminiscent of a host of put-downs, including the common buffoon and especially the rarer poltroon, the latter referring to an utter coward. Calling someone a pontoon on the other hand, would be fairly meaningless, if still kinda funny.
Definition:
a logger who rolls logs down slopes too steep for teams
Example Sentence:
I have had a drunken “ball-hooter” (log-roller) from the lumber camps fire five shots around my head as a feu-de-joie, and then stand tantalizingly, with hammer cocked over the sixth cartridge, to see what I would do about it.
— Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (MacMillan, 1922)
Note:
Ballhooters (or “ball-hooters”—see our helpful primer on hyphenating compound words) had a risky business, going where angels fear to tread—and oxen teams could not—to roll logs downhill for later sawing, milling, the whole lumbering shebang. According to our unabridged dictionary, ballhooter is a synonym of brutter which, while less likely to turn heads, probably made a sentence like “My brutter reckons he’ll be a ballhooter one day” awfully confusing.
Definition:
a semisweet cake usually of yeast-leavened dough containing raisins, citron, and nuts and baked in a fluted tube pan
Example Sentence:
We met at our house a few days later. I knew I would have to explain to him what had happened to me. I felt embarrassed; I didn’t want him to know. And when I watched him bolt down my mother’s poppy seed Gugelhupf, I relaxed and we talked and caught up on our truths.
— Andrew Lass, “Julius,” The Massachusetts Review (Spring 2003)
Note:
Given the prevalence in English of pastry-related terms of endearment like honeybun, cupcake, and the like, the German borrowing gugelhupf could be a fine thing to call someone—that is, if you’re already on such terms. But to our ears it also sounds like gentle digs such as goof and noodlehead, if you’re up for some good-natured ribbing.
Definition:
basaltic lava having a smooth, often billowy, shiny surface
Example Sentence:
Hawaii has two principal types of lava flows: pahoehoe (PAH-hoey-hoey) and a’a (ah-ah), and if you have your choice, you really want the first one. Pahoehoe is an exceedingly thick lava that can actually flow both uphill and down and will harden into smooth, undulating fields. A’a flows are rocky and sharp and leave behind a treacherously jagged range. Ever step on a single Lego in bare feet in a dark room? Imagine an entire mountainside of that.
— Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 30 Aug. 2016
Note:
The key to not getting smacked in the kisser when saying pahoehoe (a borrowing of the Hawaiian pāhoehoe) is to pronounce it correctly (see quote above and listen to the pronunciation at our entry page), though you probably want to avoid calling someone “basaltic lava” in any event. A’a (or aa) is another borrowing from Hawaiian, this time from 'a'ā, and refers to basaltic lava with a broken, rough surface; a’a can result from the same eruption of lava as pahoehoe depending on a variety of factors.
