Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present

by Hugh Rawson

The author of Crown's A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk has fun at the other end of the language spectrum in this witty, anecdote-filled guide to the many impolite, insulting, and just plain "bad" words with which the English language is blessed. Line drawings.

Genres: Reference, Writing, Language, Nonfiction, History

444 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful read, and a very useful panacea when seriousness threatens to take over the day, I recommend regular doses. Yes, I am also either biased or simply better informed (you be the judge) as I am lucky enough to have grown up with Hugh Rawson's wit, and intelligence as part of my real world existence (he is my uncle, and my world is so much richer for the years he was in my life).

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was smart-aleck teenager and, far from making me an insult filled jerk, I think it helped me become a better person. It may be trite to say it this way, but by taking the mystique out of so many of the epithets and insults that we use to hurt each other, reading this book took the "power" out of them for me. They became another subject for study. That "anything" is fair game for academic study was a revelation to me. It helped set me on the course to living a life free of intellectual taboos.

In the interest of full disclosure and lest you think I was a perfect kid: My brother and I with a VERY Irish last name did enjoy insulting each other around our house with the wealth of anti-Irish epithets. But again there was a lesson. Being white males in the south, we had never experienced discrimination. The fact that there are so many ways to insult the Irish taught me that we were only 75-100 years from a time when my family would have been mistreated as minorities in some parts of America. And I learned that the minorities subject to hate easily shift with cultural changes.

My recommendation: if you have a "bookish" teenager with the maturity to handle it, this is a fantastic book to open his/her eyes to how we are cruel to one another, how no subject should EVER be off-limits to academic study, and how fortunate he/she is to live in the time that they do where we make progress every day eliminating oppression and hate.

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally amusing but ultimately rather slight. Nominally a compendium of foul words and their etymologies, in reality it’s a collection of mostly tame and mild insults. To take some random examples: “crab,” “dummy,” “dweeb,” oaf.” While the author’s examples and comments are sometimes amusing, they’re not enough to make this book anything other than mildly interesting, and any etymological insights provided could be gained in any dictionary.

[Joanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the year we have had, one might think we would already know every wicked word there is to know, but this book offered over 400 pages of wicked words and variations (and definitions) of those words for virtually every insult, put-down and curse imaginable. Fun book!

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solo me he leído la introducción porque el resto es un diccionario de insultos y palabras ofensivas que iré consultando mientras vaya haciendo el TFG pero no me lo voy a leer como tal porque me puede dar algo

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

A witty and anecdote-filled comprehensive A to Z listing guide to the many impolite, insulting, and just plain "bad" words in the English language.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good dictionary and etymology of most any English curse word, dirty word, and epithet. It also has a pretty funny introduction defending cursing and bad words overall.

[Clackamas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though there weren't very many words or phrases in this book that I wasn't already familiar with, it was still a good read. I was interested to discover the history and original meanings of commonly used insults. For example, did you know that 'harlot' originally meant beggar? Or that it then went on to mean male scoundrel? It's only recently that it started being used for whorish women.