The other day I was distracted researching ancient swearing and came across a nifty post on classical swearing which Gary Corby then blogged about.
I’m having far too much fun with this, especially the Byzantine habit of stringing together obscenely long epithets of all sorts of naughty names. I’m thinking this might be something to teach my students.
“By-the-Goose-you-curly-headed-onion-clay-potted-dirty-dog-dating-a-viper-zipalid!”
Maybe not. But at least you’d know which students were mine in the halls, right?
And now to important matters… The winner of either Daughters of Rome or Mistress of Rome is…
Dawn Simon!
Email your address, Dawn, and which book you’d like. Huzzah!
A good post and congrats to the winner,
Yvonne.
That is hilarious! It reminds me of the Shakespearean insult kit–whereby you can generate your own Shakespeare-style insults using a word from each column to create such gems as "villainous, milk-livered clotpole."
Here's the link if you need a 17th century laugh: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html
I recently read a novel where the author felt compelled to have the main character drop the f-bomb constantly in Classical Greece, and it REALLY pulled me out of the book. All I could think was "why is he SAYING that?! Did that word even EXIST then?!"
Love the curse-word string!
I am really hoping that some of this creative insultry (new, made up word) is in you next book.
That is the kind of stuff I love.
Shelley
I used creative cursing when writing my high fantasy romance novels. Since they're set in a medieval like wold (so Christian), they swore by saying God's Wounds or God's Teeth.
Hee hee, I'm still giggling. It would be really funny to hear those long-winded epithets in the halls of a high school. Can't wait to read…!
Now that's some creative cursing!
What the heck is a zipalid? Darn! I really wanted to win!
Hehe… A zipalid is someone who's not very smart, actually someone whose head has been unzipped and their brain taken out.
And yes, I did have to look that one up. I'm going to make it a point to use that one in casual conversation!
Now I want to practice cursing in Byzantium ;D
Lol! This post made my day:) I'll have to practice some of this in my daily life…in writing only of course:)
Ha! I bet it's a lot of fun to make up those insults!
HAHAHA! Filing that insult away to use on a rainy day. Isn't it amazing what people considered to be swearing? And congrats to Dawn for winning the contest!
Oh man, I love this! What a great character trait this would be!