Topical Guide 140
Mark Dorset
Language: Slang, Insults, Terms of Abuse
She pulled a battered blue-covered paperback book from her back pocket and looked around to see if she might get caught with it. . . . “Just listen to some of this.” She flipped to a page with a folded-down corner. “Oswald says, ‘What dost thou know me for?’ And Kent answers, ‘A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats—’”
“What’s an eater of broken meats?” I asked.
Spike glared at me.
“Ohhhh!” I said. “Sure. Sure. I know.” I gave her a knowing wink, although all I’d gathered from the look she gave me was that it must be another thing that a fourth-grader should know, like the times tables, and that it was probably something I shouldn’t say in front of my parents. . . .
“It gets better,” she said. “‘—lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, cynical rogue—’”
“Wow,” I said. I wanted to ask about a couple of items in that list, but instead I raised an eyebrow in the way I’d observed adults doing when they wanted to acknowledge something but didn’t want to explain it to me.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
I’ve leaned heavily on the OED for the following glossary.
an eater of broken meats: a beggar, a person of low status, someone who survives on others’ scraps, from “broken” bread, meat, victuals, etc., meaning “fragments of food left after a meal”
lily-livered: cowardly (probably from the pale color of the lily applied to the pale visage of a coward; compare Hamlet’s “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”)
action-taking: litigious; prone to, and actually fond of, suing to settle disputes and using legal action or the threat of legal action as a weapon
whoreson: OED: “the son of a whore, a bastard son; but commonly used as a coarse term of reprobation, abuse, dislike, or contempt; sometimes even of jocular familiarity”
glass-gazing: vain; fond of admiring one’s reflection in a mirror (a glass)
super-serviceable: possibly subservient, or fawning, affecting a servile fondness, and courting favor by an abject demeanor (but I’m drifting into speculation here . . .)
Allusion; Quotation
“You know, Spike,” I said, “before I got to know you, I was afraid that you were going to beat me up or something.” We both laughed. Spike looked at her shoes and scraped them back and forth on the sidewalk. “A lot of kids think you’re some kind of monster,” I added.
“She cannot be such a monster,” muttered Spike.
“But you’re not,” I said. “You’re nice. You’ve just got a bad reputation.”
Spike looked up at me and shrugged. “I’m a kid more sinned against than sinning,” she said.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
GLOUCESTER
O villain, villain! … Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! … Where is he?
EDMUND
I do not well know, my lord. … I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further pretence of danger.
GLOUCESTER
Think you so?
EDMUND
If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening.
GLOUCESTER
He cannot be such a monster—
EDMUND
Nor is not, sure.Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, Scene II
LEAR
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipp’d of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou similar man of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practiced on man’s life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene II
Foreshadowing
“Oh, hey,” [Spike] called. “I almost forgot.”
She walked back toward me, and I walked down the steps toward her. When we reached each other, she grabbed the front of my jacket in her fist and twisted it so that her knuckles dug into my chest. She put her face close to mine, so that she was looking right into my eyes, and when she spoke, her spit sprayed onto me.
“I really want to play Cordelia,” she said. “And if I don’t get the part, I’ll break your foot with a brick.”Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
Remember that threat.
[more to come on Monday, November 29, 2021]
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