10 Dirty Words You Don’t Know (Part 2)
The Legendary Cambronne
“That’s a load of old cambronne” — a phrase that used to be heard in the tearooms and coffee houses of 19th century England when someone doubted the veracity of an idea or opinion. Sadly, it has fallen into disuse and lives on only in footnotes to treatises on latrinalia (the definition of which is discussed later in this chapter). The word cambronne is eponymous as every Frenchman surely knows. Here’s one version of its origin:
The scene is the final hours of the battle of Waterloo and the French General Pierre Cambronne finds himself heavily outnumbered and surrounded by English soldiers and cannon. In command of the British troops is the generous General Colville. Through his young interpreter, Charles Bartleby-Snobsworth, Colville calls to Cambronne with the words: “I say, old boy, no need for any further nastiness. Why not lay down your weapons and we can all watch the rest of the pyrotechnics from here?”
General Colville unfortunately cannot speak a word of French, and Bartleby-Snobsworth, the interpreter, actually skipped French classes at Eton to play Cricket, so he knows only “un mot où deux.” General Cambronne, who speaks flawless English, chooses foolishly to respond in French, shouting out bravely, “La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!”
Bartleby-Snobsworth doesn’t understand a word of this and mishears it anyway, thinking Cambronne said, “merde,” not “meurt.” So when Colville asks him what Cambronne said, he replies, “Shit, sir! The Frenchy said ‘shit’.” “That’s hardly polite,” mutters General Colville as he signals the order to fire the cannons.
That’s one version of what happened at Waterloo and it’s a load of old cambronne, but the fact is that no one seems to know the truth. After-battle commentary had two versions: Cambronne saying, “Merde!” and Cambronne saying, “La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!” (“The Guard dies and does not surrender!”).
Cambronne, who survived but was wounded, denied saying either of these things. Nevertheless, merde became known in France as le mot Cambronne and, in Britain, cambronne became an eponymous euphemism.
Quadriliteral
“Good authors, too, who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words. Writing prose…
Anything goes.”
Or at least that’s what the lyrics of the Cole Porter song will insist. However, quadriliterals — those four letter words — are still largely avoided in many situations. The f-word, king of the quadriliterals, was in common usage in the 16th century and only became a vulgar term in the 18th century — banned even from the Oxford English Dictionary. It was outlawed in print in England by the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, and in the U.S. by the Comstock Act of 1873. The censorship didn’t persist, however, because writers trying to portray realistic speech saw the need to use the f-word.
The American author, Norman Mailer, tried in 1948 to reintroduce the word in his novel, The Naked and the Dead. His publisher, however, prevailed upon him to replace the offensive quadriliteral with the word fug throughout. When, at some later date, Mailer was introduced to fellow writer Dorothy Parker, she greeted him with, “So you’re the man who can’t spell fuck.”
By 1950, James Jones’s From Here to Eternity was published with the inclusion of 50 instances of the f-word. By the time the 1960s came around, the f-word was slipping past the U.K. and U.S. censors on a regular basis, and Kenneth Tynan, the English theatre critic, made a name for himself worldwide by becoming the first person to use the questionable quadriliteral on live television.
Hadeharia
My parents informed me at an early age that the word fuck, the king of the quadriliterals, was strictly taboo and never to be uttered. When I was growing up, I spent many (many, many, many) hours laboring alongside a bunch of down-to-earth shipyard welders whose use of the word fuck as a verb was pretty much non-stop and liberally mixed with the word as just about every other part of speech or usage you can think of — noun, adjective, adverb, and gerund — even tmesis. I estimated at the time that the word fuck made up about 10 percent of all the words that came out of their mouths. They had even developed inventive usages like compound words and portmanteau words, my favorites being fuckworthy and fucktard. Really creative guys, those welders. But then, it was Liverpool, and that’s just how Liverpudlian welders roll.
Later on in life, when I saw Reservoir Dogs at the movies, I realized that Quentin Tarantino must have run into exactly the same group of welders. I’d love to find a word that describes the habit of constantly using the word fuck, but I don’t think there is one. However, I did find hadeharia, which means the constant use of the word hell. Sadly, I’ve never met a hadeharian. I presume the word dates back to the time when hell was consider a strong word and Hades, the Greek underworld, was a common euphemism.
But I am undaunted. In the spirit of creativity, I hearby propose this new word — fuckharia — to honor all my one-time fuckharian colleagues. But not that fugharian, Norman Mailer.
Lalochezia
Lalochezia is the use of foul or abusive language in response to sudden stress or pain. It’s a quirk of many people, in my experience — with the most common expletive being the s-word or the f-word. However, lalochezia need not be confined to such unimaginative expletives. It can be flowery.
I remember, for example, a relative of mine who was working on a boat engine one day. He pushed down too hard on a wrench, which promptly slipped off the bolt it was gripping, and this caused him to smash his hand into the engine casing. “You snot-gobbling bastard!” he screamed at the motor, which struck me as delightfully inappropriate.
My mother, from whom I never heard a single swear word in my life, was inclined to simply shout “Damn! Damn! Damn!” when pain moved her to explete. Very mild indeed, but at least it was a quadriliteral. In any event, from my observations, euphemisms seem to work just as well as the foulest of language. I remember a very polite aunt of mine shouting “Sugar! Sugar! Sugar! Sugar! Sugar!” when her hammer hit her thumb and then muttering “sugar” under her breath when she realized I was watching her.
Personally, my habit is to make a lot of noise. Indeed, it seems quite inappropriate to me to try to articulate anything in response to unwelcome intense sensory stimuli. So, I just scream my heart out.
Latrinalia
The c-word is undoubtedly the queen of all swear words and, as in the game of chess, the queen is more powerful than the king, at least in its ability to offend.
It wasn’t always like that. Most people will be surprised to discover that London once boasted a district called Gropecunte Lane, named in honor of the prostitutes that worked there. When Londoners eventually decided that a name change was in order, they decided on the euphemism Threadneedle Street so that the essential character of the locale would not be lost.
This is the street on which the Bank of England was eventually built and, oddly, the Bank of England became affectionately known as “The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.” However, that title was not in honor of any of the ladies who were affectionately known for having their needles threaded prior to the appearance of the bank. It was to honor the memory of Sarah Whitehead whose brother Philip, a former employee of the bank, was executed for the crime of forgery. This caused poor Sarah to lose her mind and, after his execution, she turned up at the bank asking for him every day for 25 years, until she died of old age.
Latrinalia, as you may be able to deduce from its etymons, refers to words that, like the c-word, are fit only for restroom walls. Attempts have been made to return the c-word to common usage, or if not entirely common usage, to a less offensive status. Several novelists have tried to habituate censors to its use in literature in recent times. James Joyce included it once in Ulysses; D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, thus prompting a famous British obscenity trial; and Samuel Beckett used it once in Malone Dies.
Well, after these literary forays failed, the British punk band, The Sex Pistols, picked up the gauntlet, making a spirited attempt to promote the word with the song, “Pretty Vacant,” with the word vacant being pronounced vay-kunt, as in “we’re vacant…and we don’t care.”
The Sex pistols were in excellent literary company with Joyce, Lawrence and Beckett, but their efforts failed. Bringing the c-word into common usage was something that was beyond even Shakespeare. He referred to the word obliquely in the play, Twelfth Night. In the scene where Malvolio scrutinizes a letter for signs that the handwriting is indeed Olivia’s, he says, “These be her very c’s, her u’s, ’n’ her t’s, and thus she makes her great p’s.”
Despite all of these artistic efforts, the c-word remains unchallenged as the most obscene of all words. If one were to bring it into common usage, we’d need to find another word to occupy its disquieting throne.
10 Dirty Words You Don’t Know (Part 1)
10 Dirty Words You Don’t Know (Part 3)
If you’re interested in other obscure words you don’t know, click here.
Robin Bloor is the author of Words You Don’t Know. For the record, he is also the author of The “Common Sense” of Crypto Currency, runs the website TheDataRightsofMan.com, is a founder of TurtleIslandCoin.io and a member of the advisory board for Permission.io.
