The Wild and Crazy World of “Cutthroat Compounds”

A quakebuttock, a praisegravy, and a killpriest walk into a bar ...

What do you call someone whose vices include being a cutpurse, a pickpocket, a skinflint, a tattletale, a fussbudget and, more generally, a do-nothing, lackluster scofflaw and scapegrace? Well, I’d argue we’ve already called this person enough names, but what’s interesting is that each of these little bits of slander is a surprisingly rare and rather wonderful type of word known to linguists as “agentive and instrumental exocentric…