Biting insults are a matter of creative expression and have been since long before Gen Zers began deriding people as “chud” or “mid.” Look back hundreds of years and you’ll find some truly strange epithets — or strange to our modern ears, at least. These archaic verbal barbs are long obsolete, but it’s interesting to see the depth of creativity around vintage insults. Here are nine examples of insulting terms that may sound a bit goofy to the modern ear.

The term “snollygoster” refers to “a shrewd, unprincipled person.” It gained a particular prominence in the realm of 19th-century American politics. An 1895 piece in The Columbus Dispatch defined the insult as “a fellow who wants office regardless of party, platform or principles and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknothical assumnacy.” Though the term’s origins are disputed, some claim it’s a variation of “snallygaster” — a word for a mythical creature in rural Maryland that’s part reptile, part bird, and rumored to prey on poultry and children.

In A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788), Francis Grose defined a Duke of Limbs as “a tall, awkward, ill-made fellow.” In other words, people would bestow this unwanted regal title upon anyone unfortunate enough to have ungainly, gangly limbs.

The origins of the insult “lickspittle” — defined as “a fawning subordinate” — date back to 1586, when “licke the spittle” was used in a commentary about the Hebrew biblical book of Haggai as a metaphor for someone who laps up the saliva of their master. By the mid-17th century, the word “lickspittle” had gained traction as a general insult. It’s more or less a synonym for “bootlicker,” “sycophant,” or any other term to describe an obsequious individual.

We turn back to A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue for the definition of “grumbletonian,” a word that means “a discontented person; one who is always railing at the times, or ministry.” This insult was used in the late 17th century among members of England’s Court Party (now known as Tories) toward members of the opposing Country Party, who were criticized for “being actuated by dissatisfied personal ambition.” Essentially, grumbletonians are constant complainers.

A simple, foolish, or absent-minded individual could be called a mooncalf. The word comes from a superstition that moons could affect the development of farm animals during pregnancy, leading to deformed births. “Mooncalf” was used by William Shakespeare to describe a deformed creature in The Tempest. The term grew into a more general insult by 1614, used in reference to dim-witted souls.

A saddle-goose is an absolute fool. The meaning of this insult is right there in the name; it stems from the idea of attempting to put a saddle on a goose, which almost everyone would agree is a foolish endeavor. This insult was coined during the 19th century.

The insult “smellfungus” comes from British novelist Laurence Sterne’s 1768 book, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. He used it in reference to author Tobias Smollett, who had written Travels Through France and Italy two years prior. Sterne viewed Smollett as a hypercritical traveler who was always complaining, so he created a character named Smelfungus (with one “l”) to satirize Smollett, which gave rise to the insult “smellfungus.” 

“Gundy-gut” refers to “a guttonous, voracious person” — think Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s classic film The Meaning of Life. The term dates back to 1699, combining the word “gundy” — a Scottish candy made with treacle — and “gut,” referencing a person’s paunchy stomach.

“Ultracrepidarian” is an insult for a person who makes presumptions and offers advice or opinions beyond their sphere of knowledge. It comes from an ancient tale about the Greek painter Apelles, who was criticized by a cobbler for the way that he depicted a foot in one of his paintings. Apelles is said to have offered a rebuke along the lines of ultra crepidam — which is Latin for “beyond the sole” — thus implying that the cobbler should stick to shoemaking.

Whether you’re talking about clams, moolah, Benjamins, or simoleons, there’s no shortage of English slang for money. Among the most popular terms is the word “buck,” which is so commonplace, you may not have even realized it’s slang. It can be used to refer to a single U.S. dollar, or in common expressions such as “borrow a few bucks” and “make a quick buck” (in reference to earning a sum of money). To better understand where the word comes from, however, we need to go back to the early 18th century, a time before the U.S. adopted federally issued paper currency.

During the 1700s, deer hides — also called buckskins — were commonly used in trades between American frontiersmen and North American Indigenous communities. Animal pelts were viewed as durable and highly valuable, and they became a driving force of the bartering economy.

In an interview with Reader’s Digest, lexicographer Grant Barrett proposes a theory that “buck” came from “buckskin,” claiming that buckskins were bartered far and wide in the Americas by the 1740s. Britannica further notes the appearance of the abbreviation “bucks” (for “buckskins”) in a trader’s journal from 1748. Essentially, trading one buckskin was paying one buck for goods. While this theory connects bucks to bartering, we don’t find published evidence of it as slang for cash until the 1850s.  

The United States had an interesting journey to get to the bills in your wallet today. The Coinage Act of 1792 established the U.S. Mint and regulated coins, but not banknotes. Paper currency can be traced to the 17th and 18th centuries — individual colonies issued their own currency, and continental currency was issued during the Revolutionary War — but there was not a national paper currency until 1861.

While the buckskin explanation is considered the most reputable, Barrett proposed two other commonly discussed theories in his interview with Reader’s Digest. One is that “buck” is derived from the poker table: An item was passed around the table to signify when a new jackpot must be made, and it was common to use a buckhorn-handled knife for this job. This usage might be the origin of the phrase “pass the buck,” which describes shifting responsibility onto someone else.

Another theory is that “buck” is a shortened version of “sawbuck,” an early nickname for the $10 bill. The earliest $10 notes featured a big “X” on the back — the Roman numeral for 10. This “X” evoked images of an X-shaped wooden rack known as a sawbuck, leading to the slang. However, the $10 bill was released in 1861, and evidence of the slang term “buck” connected to U.S. currency dates to the decade prior. Thus, the buckskin trading theory seems most likely.

Some abbreviations are obvious — you type “lol” instead of “laughing out loud,” for example, and use “Tbsp.,” “tsp.,” and “c.” in a recipe that calls for tablespoons, teaspoons, and cups. You might even know the difference between acronyms (abbreviations that are said as a word, such as NASA) and initialisms (abbreviations pronounced with individual letters, such as FBI). But there are many more sneaky abbreviations hiding in your everyday speech. 

Can you find all 18 abbreviations in this story about Sally’s day off?

Now read the same story with the common abbreviations spelled out:

The function of an abbreviation is to reduce any word to its essence. Technically, it’s shrinking a word to its morpheme, the smallest unit of meaning, for efficiency. Let’s explain some of the most common hidden abbreviations. 

The word “typographical” hearkens back to the early days of the printing press, in the 16th century. The abbreviated “typo” was coined in the 19th century — back then, each printed page was built from tiny metal letters set by hand, backward and line by line, then locked in place, inked, and pressed onto paper. “Typo” referred to when the typesetter made an error in their placement, and the abbreviation has persisted ever since, now applying to mistakes made by any writer using a keyboard.  

 This recent coinage, popular among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, is short for “charisma.” The versatile “rizz” can be used as a noun (“she’s got rizz”) or a verb (“to rizz up” a person by using charisma to attract them), with variants including the comparative “rizzier.”

 We use smartphone apps for a million things a day, usually without realizing that “app” is short for “application.” In the context of computers, the abbreviation originated in the 1970s, when it referred to an application program, which is software developed to solve a specific user problem. “App” was popularized in 1985 when Apple launched the MacApp, and it further spread in 2008 when Apple launched the App Store.

The etymology of the word reflects the function of a bus, which is to enable anyone to hitch a ride on it. “Bus” comes from the Latin “omnibus,” the dative plural of “omnis,” meaning “all.” The abbreviation is short for the French voiture omnibus, a carriage for all.

In 18th-century London, a light horse-drawn carriage was a cabriolet, colloquially known as a cab.  “Cabriolet” is ultimately from the Latin “capreolus,” meaning “wild goat” — appropriate because it had springy suspensions. “Cab” first applied to transportation for hire at the end of the 19th century. The related “taxi” is short for “taximeter cab,” introduced in London in 1907, from the Latin “taxa,” meaning “tax, charge.”

The German word “Delikatessen,” a plural of “Delikatesse,” means “delicacy, fine food.” The shortened “deli” became common in America in the mid-1900s, shortly after World War II. Delis were especially popular in big cities such as New York, which were influenced by Jewish immigrant culture.

Submarine sandwiches became popular around the mid-20th century, so named because of their submarine-like appearance. One theory is that they originated in New London, Connecticut, during World War II, when workers at a local Navy shipyard popularized “submarine” to describe the sandwich shaped like the ships they were working on.

Americans love regionalisms. Look no further than how people refer to soft drinks around the country — you’re likely to hear “soda,” “pop,” or “coke,” depending on whether you’re in the Northeast, Midwest, or Deep South. There are also terms that are used in much narrower regions and may not be known outside of a specific city or town. Here’s a look at some words and phrases that are understood among locals but are unfamiliar to other Americans.

A sandwich served on a long roll may be called a hoagie in the Mid-Atlantic or a sub in the Midwest. But to Bostonians, these hefty sandwiches are known as spuckies. This regionalism is derived from the Italian slang spucadella, which translates to “long roll.” However, spucadella isn’t a common word in Italy itself. It’s believed to have originated within Italian American communities in Boston, and it was then shortened as the name of a locally popular type of sandwich.

“Junt” — commonly heard in Memphis, Tennessee — is a variation of the word “joint” in the AAVE dialect. It’s used as a catchall word for any person, place, or thing. For a person, you might say, “I know that junt.” For places, you can say, “I’m headed to that junt.” And for things, you could say, “Hand me that junt.” 

Between the sidewalk and the curb, there’s often a thin strip of grass. To people who live in Akron, Ohio, that’s called the devil’s strip. While it’s not wholly clear where this regionalism originated, the Dictionary of American Regional English says that it might have to do with being a “sort of no-man’s-land between public and private property.”

Boonville, California, is a tiny hamlet known for its own secret dialect called Boontling, which was created in the late 19th century. Of the many unusual terms in this language, one that caught our attention is “bahl gorms.” It means “good food,” with “bahl” meaning “good” and “gorms” meaning “food.” You could also say “bahl hornin’” for “good drinking,” and you can describe anything as the “bahlest” if it’s the absolute best.

Woonsocket, Rhode Island, has a historically large population of French Canadians who began migrating there in the 1840s. Their presence spawned a regional vernacular called New England French, which combines English words with French syntax. Of the many unique terms used by locals, one particularly interesting phrasing is “side by each” — an alternative to the more common version in English, “side by side.” For instance, a parking lot may be full of cars parked side by each.

The word “jit” is a regionalism from the city of Tampa, Florida, that’s used in reference to children, rookies, or anyone younger than yourself. There’s a debate over the origins of this term, but many folks believe that it’s an acronym for “junior in training.” “Jit” first became popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, primarily through local hip-hop culture.

A St. Paul sandwich naturally comes from St. Paul, Minnesota — the hometown of Steven Yuen, who created the recipe in the 1940s. Oddly, you probably won’t find a deli selling this sandwich in the Twin Cities, as it’s far more popular in St. Louis, Missouri, the city Yuen moved to. It’s a combination of American and Chinese fare, featuring an egg foo young patty, pickles, lettuce, tomato, and mayo between two slices of white bread.

What most Americans know as soft serve, Vermonters call a creemee. Some think it’s derived from the French word “crème,” while others say it came about because of the high butterfat content that makes each scoop especially creamy. You might also wonder why the term is spelled “creemee” instead of “creamy” or “creamee.” There’s no clear answer, but that’s not of much concern to locals, who’ve embraced the regional spelling.

The term “whoopensocker,” referring to anything that’s extraordinary of its kind, is popular among Wisconsinites. It’s a combination of the terms “whoop,” which is largely used as an expression of jubilation, and “socker,” as in a punch that really knocks you over — in this case, with how awesome the thing is.

Virginia is for lovers, but it’s also for jabbling. The term “jabble” has long existed in British English as a word that means “mental or emotional agitation.” Its meaning is more physical to Virginians, who define “jabble” as “to shake things up.” Just imagine you’re looking for your car keys in your bag, but they’re hard to find because everything has been jabbled around.