Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from How Stuff Works a brain
Speaker 1: stuff It's Christian saga. After President Trump referred to Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un as rocketman during a speech at the United Nations,
Speaker 1: the North Korean Supreme Leader issued a statement referring to
Speaker 1: Trump as a quote mentally deranged U S dodord. According
Speaker 1: to reports, North Korea's communications team has been known to
Speaker 1: actually use out of date English Korean dictionaries for translation.
Speaker 1: So maybe there's something to the forty five American president's
Speaker 1: claims that he has the best words. Regardless if nothing
Speaker 1: else comes out of this latest incident, at least the
Speaker 1: word dodord is having a moment. Here's what it means,
Speaker 1: as well as a few more insulting terms that have
Speaker 1: gone the way of the dodo but that we're hoping
Speaker 1: at some point will enjoy their own renaissance. So Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un called Donald Trump a do modored What is
Speaker 1: that exactly? The term goes back to the thirteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and means someone who's in his or her dotage, which,
Speaker 1: according to the Miriam Webster Dictionary, is quote a state
Speaker 1: or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental
Speaker 1: poise and alertness. In recent years, dodored has primarily shown
Speaker 1: up in writing about the arts. Have you ever met
Speaker 1: someone who sticks to their ways despite being shown better
Speaker 1: or more correct approaches. Perhaps you've got that relative who
Speaker 1: just prefers not to use smartphone shortcuts or hot key
Speaker 1: combinations on their laptop. Congrats, you are related to a mumpsimus.
Speaker 1: Miriam Webster suggests that the etymology of mumpsimus goes back
Speaker 1: to an illiterate priest who mistakenly used the term in
Speaker 1: place of the Latin word sumpsimus, which means we have taken.
Speaker 1: He did this during a mass ritual, but refused to
Speaker 1: correct himself even after the error was pointed out. Now,
Speaker 1: everyone's got that pedantic friend who only interrupts or chimes
Speaker 1: in to correct another person. You may call them nitpicky,
Speaker 1: no it alls who lived to contradict with an irritating
Speaker 1: well technically or just plain old man splainers, But why
Speaker 1: not call them a snout band? That is the forgotten
Speaker 1: old English insult, and that's what it means snout band.
Speaker 1: The med lar, however, is a type of hard skinned
Speaker 1: fruit with a gaping open apex, and the only time
Speaker 1: it's soft enough to eat is when it's on the
Speaker 1: verge of going bad, so it was often associated with
Speaker 1: rotten nous and showed up in insulting references to prostitution,
Speaker 1: genitals and rear ends. In post Renaissance England, medlars were
Speaker 1: often called open arses due to their appearance, making for
Speaker 1: plenty of word play in insult potential in poems and plays.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare in particular enjoyed the medlar, using the word as
Speaker 1: a pun on Medler in Time and of Athens, and
Speaker 1: for some of Mecurtio's teasing of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 1: Jokes about medlars appeared even earlier than that, though, popping
Speaker 1: up in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the late foe century.
Speaker 1: But what do you call someone who, shrewd and cunning
Speaker 1: as they may be, seems to be motivated by no
Speaker 1: principles whatsoever, especially if that someone is in politics. Well,
Speaker 1: snolly gostar is the term you're looking for. Popularized in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties by the Georgia politician Colonel H. J. W. Ham,
Speaker 1: the term goes back at least a half decade more
Speaker 1: than that. In eight Ohio newspaper defined it thus Lee quote.
Speaker 1: A snolly gowstar is a fellow who wants office regardless
Speaker 1: of party platform er principles, and who, whenever he wins,
Speaker 1: gets there by the sheer amount of monumental talk. Na
Speaker 1: fickle Assumancy who snollygastar disappeared from much of the twenty century,
Speaker 1: but enjoyed a brief resurgence during President Harry S. Truman's
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two re election campaign, when he used the
Speaker 1: term in reference to other candidates. And here's our last one.
Speaker 1: You want to insult someone's cooking, call that play in
Speaker 1: front of you a slum gullion. The words gone through
Speaker 1: some changes over its life span, but today it means
Speaker 1: an unappetizing or cheaply made stew. In eighteen fifty ones,
Speaker 1: Moby Dick Herman Melville used the phrase slobgollian to refer
Speaker 1: to the waste from processing whale carcasses, and the word
Speaker 1: slum gullion shows up that same decade in Miner's Diaries,
Speaker 1: describing a slurry leftover from mining gold. In eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: when Mark Twain used the word in his semi autobiographical
Speaker 1: book Roughing It, he was using it to refer to
Speaker 1: a disgusting beverage, and within two decades it was used
Speaker 1: to refer to muddy looking stews. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Christopher hasiotis produced by Tristan McNeil, and For more
Speaker 1: on this and other topics, please visit us at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com