Daily Dose of English 151
Insults
Daily Dose of English 151
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm really glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about insults. That's kind of a fun topic. So an insult is something that you say to somebody else, usually to make them feel bad in some way. And so it doesn't necessarily have to be a name, right? If you call them a name that's saying that, oh, you're stupid, you're an idiot, right? That's called name calling. But an insult can also be a little more complicated. It can be either veiled, a veiled insult is when you kind of hide it behind something. Right? And so let's, for example, let's say your friend buys a new shirt and you hate it. You think it looks so dumb. It looks stupid. And so you could, you could sort of use a veiled insult by saying, wow, your style is really something different. Right? That's, that's not, that's not a compliment, even though it kind of sounds like one, it's actually an insult. You might call that a veiled insult. There's, That's a fairly common thing, especially among younger people. And it's, I mean, it happens all the time, right? Availed insults, because you can sort of insult somebody like that, right? Also, you can insult somebody a little bit more directly, usually about something that they do or have done, right, without name calling. saying, wow, that was the stupidest thing that I've ever heard in my entire life. And I hope that I never have to hear anything as dumb as that ever again. That'd be an insult. That wouldn't be very nice to say to somebody. But it also might be considered a bit of a put down. A put down is basically a kind of insult, but it has to do with sort of crushing somebody's idea in a way, it's specifically about thing, like ideas and that sort of thing. It's sort of hard to explain. I've only really ever heard it in like the context of school, but sort of like shutting somebody down or putting them down, not literally, to literally put somebody down is to kill them, usually used with animals or dogs, but like to stop somebody's idea saying, no, that's a dumb idea. No, no. That's a put down. You generally want to avoid those until it's gone too far, but then it's like, maybe we'll do something else. But I generally had in mind talking more about name calling and other insults like that because it's not something that you can always just pick up through listening to a lot of English because there are some subtleties and things that happen not necessarily on TV shows, for example, which is where you'll hear probably the most insults on average out of any media. But yeah, basically let's talk about them. So I already said a couple, right? Starting with like sort of kid things, right? Calling somebody stupid or an idiot definitely is a common insult. Those are probably some of the most frequently used, just stupid and idiot because they're so easy or dumb, right? Don't be a dummy or don't be dumb is also good. Oh God, he's so dumb is another thing, right? All those words though also can be, except for idiot, right? Stupid and dumb also apply to tons of other things, right? Like a dumb decision. They're not really bad words in any way. You can say dumb and idiot and they're usually even a bit more playful, right? You can say to your friend, don't be such an idiot, dude. What are you doing, right? That's not even that, that's not that rude or anything like that. That's a pretty common thing to say to a friend. Actually calling somebody an idiot, like if you really mean it and you don't really know them, that's not very nice. Same thing with dumb or stupid. The word dumb also you might know is for somebody that can't speak literally. Like they don't or can't speak from either some mental problem or physical problem. Somebody who is a mute can also be called dumb. It's not really that commonly used to mean that thing, but you might come across it. But that does make me wanna talk about a lot of insults come from something else in the language, right? So calling them either a funny word or a word that means something else, right? There's plenty of words that we used to use or that were used more often when the thing that they were being compared to was, how do I explain this? So the most common one is the N word. which used to be sort of an insult or a name for slaves, essentially. And it became, at a certain point, a very rude insult after the civil rights movement and the fact that everybody is a human being and you should never keep slaves. So it became a very sort of dirty insult saying that I don't believe that you are the same level of human that I am. which is part of the reason it's not a thing that you can say anymore. It is because it is essentially saying to somebody that you don't think that they are worthy of the same human treatment as you are. However, it has also been adapted in many dialects to be something totally different, being just like a normal way of like saying bro or dude. Um, however, those dialects, first off that is in, uh, not necessarily debate, but like a lot of people that speak those dialects don't think that they should use that word that is, that it has such a, a, a bad past and history of that word. But then also there are plenty of, um, people that sort of, it's not even like thought of like that. It's become a totally different thing. Um, but that division is definitely along, um, racial lines. So it's very jarring pretty much to hear anybody use it who is not like a native speaker of a, of an black English dialect. Ah, excuse me. There's a couple other ones. There's an F word to refer to homosexuals, which is a very common word in the UK for a cigarette still, but in the US it is a very vicious and brutal insult that has a lot of history behind it. So it's just, it's become a taboo word that you just don't say because it's sort of, it's sort of crossing a line saying again, sort of that a homosexual doesn't deserve the same level of rights or treatment or whatever it is. And then there's also this one, there's a bunch of like that. I'm running out of time, so I don't want to go into more of those. I want to talk more about actual like normal insults that you can use. So like I said, dumb, idiot, stupid, but there's also plenty of like body-related ones, right? Calling somebody a dickhead is like a rude person, right? Don't be a dick, right? A dick. You can also call somebody a boob. That's like kind of just, it's sort of like a dumb person or like somebody who's being like boring or dull. Don't be such a boob. That was not super common, but I like it. I think it's funny. There's also, what was the other one? Dickhead, boob. Ah, what was it? Oh, going to like toilet humor, like a doody head, a poopy head, a shithead. Those are all plenty of other common ones. There's plenty of bodily fluids happen, right? Piss off is one that you can say as well. That's not really an insult. That's more of like a get away from me. But then also you can definitely add a lot of other words into your insults. So things like fuck, shit, whatever. Like, don't be such a fucking idiot. It makes it a lot stronger, right? That's like, oh, okay, that's not really that friendly. Unless you specifically have that relationship with your friend, right? Oh, moron is another one that's just like idiot. That sounds cooler, moron. God, there's so many different ways to go about this. Um, okay. I, I'm sort of running out of specific names to call somebody, but another route you can go is comparing them to something. Right. So, uh, like that's often called a metaphor. Yeah. Metaphor is when you're saying you're being a, um, You're dumb as a brick. That's actually a simile. You're dumb as a brick, right? You're dumb as a brick, saying that you're comparing them to a brick. Or don't be such a pig. A pig is somebody who eats a lot, right? Although something I've heard is that in many European languages, calling people animal names can be really quite rude, like very rude. But in English, it's actually, like calling somebody a pig is actually pretty normal, right? Say to your friend, you're such a pig, you eat so much or slow down dude, you're eating so fast, don't be a pig. And that's pretty common. Calling somebody a cow is also pretty funny, it's not really that big of an insult. So yeah, you can compare them to all sorts of different things. Some of the funniest insults that people come up with are saying like what somebody is, right? Not necessarily calling them a name, but saying sort of what they are, what they do, because it's often a lot more true, right? If you just say, fuck you, you're an idiot, that's not really that descriptive. But if you say, oh, pfft. You're so dumb, you couldn't have a good idea if it hit you in the head or something like that, right? That's the best I could come up with in five seconds, I'm sorry. But there's people that are way better than me at insulting. So you might wanna listen to them. But that's all the time that I have for today. That is my episode on insults. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something. Let me know what you did down in the comments below and I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good rest of your day. Bye-bye. Idiot.
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