Jess Zafaris

And it's true that the word crap did emerge around that time, but its origin is probably and almost certainly not associated with his name, more that it's an invention of plosive origin.

You know, it has the satisfying consonants that we use.

It's probably a lot gentler than it used to be, and it also has a more generic meaning.

The ending you'll find shows up in other words as well.

The ending ARD or ART is a French ending used to intensify words.

You could say it means very or too much.

So say a drunkard is someone who drinks too much.

A braggart is someone who brags too much.

A dullard is someone who's very dull.

It's not always a pejorative.

It's also found in the word wizard, which is someone who's very wise.

But the word bastard is from the old French fils de bast, meaning pack, saddle, sun.

Saddles and horse blankets doubled as beds during travel, so a feastabast was a son or a child, implying that a man conceived that child while he was traveling away from home with a woman who wasn't his wife or whom he had to travel to visit.

So I think that's kind of a funny one.

insults across the board, I'd say can be pretty mild.

We get words like chump, which implies someone who's block-headed like a block of wood.

There are words like dork, which showed up in school culture probably as a mincing of a vulgar word for a male body part, also starting with a D. Words like dweeb and nerd have shown up in college culture with

vague origins, sometimes fanciful, sometimes imitative.

And then words like geek are infused with some interesting history, like that one in particular described performers who

ate or bit off pieces of live animals.