30 Responses to “20 Insults from P. G. Wodehouse”

1. 1.   QUASAR Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am

   What or who is P. G. Wodehouse?

2. 2.   Julianne Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:05 am

   He’s a prolific author best known for the Wooster & Jeeves stories. Born in england but spent most of his life in the states. Hard to read without laughing out loud.

   Some of the insults above are actually meant affectionately.

3. 3.   Adrian Burd Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:07 am

   QUASAR: Two words, “Jeeves” and “Wooster”

   For more about Sir Pelham Grenville Woodhouse visit

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse

4. 4.   Dennis Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am

   I hate it, too, when both my Google and my Wikipedia are broken.

5. 5.   L Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:15 am

   I call balderdash! According to Curb Your Enthusiasm S3 E4 and theYale Book of Quotations (by way of the Freakonomics blog (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/quotes-uncovered-who-said-data-kills/)), referring to any person as “the ____ from Hell” is attributed to comedian Richard Lewis, who first did so around 1986. Wodehouse was 11 years gone by then. Something is amiss…

6. 6.   Joe Bogus Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:20 am

   And this is here because….? It really doesn’t take an author to coin slams:

   infected hemorrhoidal pustule

   malignant anal zit

   syphilitic result of an unholy union

   There’s probably a few websites that can do all this for you — no need to even think about it.

7. 7.   Julianne Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 10:23 am

   Well, I call balderdash on Curb your Enthusiasm and the Freakonomics Blog and the Yale Book of Quotations:

   “Gorringe, you ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from hell,” she thundered, forgetting, or so I imagine, that she was a hostess. — Bertie Wooster Sees it Through

   and

   “Well, let’s get down to it,” he said. “No sense in wasting time. Properly speaking, I ought to charge this sheepfaced, shambling refugee from hell.” — The Return of Jeeves

   I rest my case.

8. 8.   Pieter Kok Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

   I still prefer Zwicke’s “spherical bastard”, i.e., someone who is a bastard from every angle.

9. 9.   Claire C Smith Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

   Julianne,

   This is hilarious! Us Brits are so stuffy or fussy with our language, I can’t stand it.

   Claire

10. 10.   John Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    My favorite quote of his (I can’t remember which story, but it was when Jeeves had to quell an angry swan and retrieve Wooster from the roof of a gazebo:

    He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “when!”

11. 11.   psmith Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    The real trick is to guess the blighter that each one of these insults references. I’d bet a week’s do-re-mi the ‘newt-nuzzling blister’ is good ole Gussie Fink-Nottle!

12. 12.   Julianne Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    You mean Spink-Bottle!

    (and yeah, “newt-nuzzling” was kindof a gimmie).

    Some of the rest are probably harder, as many are from non-Wooster novels.

13. 13.   Andy Lawrence Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    I type from memory, but my favourite is (roughly) “she had a voice like a troop of cavalry crossing a tin bridge”

14. 14.   Peter Coles Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 2:24 am

    My favourite:

    “She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built around her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight around the hips that season.”

15. 15.   Phillip Helbig Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 3:37 am

    Of course, the web is full of Shakespearean insult generators.

16. 16.   Peter Coles Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 7:34 am

    Andy’s example reminds me of Thomas Beecham’s description of the sound a harpsichord makes: “like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof”.

17. 17.   Low Math, Meekly Interacting Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 9:28 am

    I take “of the first water” to mean something like “of the first order” or “of the highest order” but can’t fathom how “water” and “order” would be interchangeable if I’m correct. Could some kind person familiar with stuffy bygone English idioms decipher, please?

    “Newt-nuzzling”. Heh.

18. 18.   Sili Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    I happen to like harpsichords.

    Are you working on grant proposals?

19. 19.   Julianne Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Are you working on grant proposals?

    Nope — I just finished reading 6 Wodehouse novels in a row, and thought I’d share.

    The quotes that others are fishing out drive home one of Wodehouse’s gifts — he can craft similes like nobody’s business. In about 95% of novels, similes come off as an overly precious trick that the writer was taught in high school. They are extremely difficult to do well. In contrast, Wodehouse slips them in all over the place, to great effect. It may be that the simile form (which is all about finding similarities in incongruous things) works better in comedy, which itself is often about finding humor in incongruous things. When reading a “serious” novel, I groan a bit at most similes.

20. 20.   David T Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    @LowMath – “First water” refers to the clarity of diamonds, and means “of the highest clarity”; therefore, top quality.

21. 21.   Low Math, Meekly Interacting Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    Ah! Thanks so much!

22. 22.   Ludwig and Bertie « The e-Astronomer Says:
    June 19th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

    [...] and Bertie Over at Cosmic Variance, Julianne listed Twenty Insults from P.G.Wodehouse, and myself and his Colesness joined in.  I have to confess that I find P.G.Wodehouse inexplicably [...]

23. 23.   Peter Coles Says:
    June 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am

    Julianne,

    I think the TV comedy series Blackadder were great at lampooning similes: “..as cunning as a fox who’s just been made Professor of Cunning at Oxford University”, etc.

    My favourite, though, was “You twist and turn like a twisty-turny thing.”

    Peter

24. 24.   Julianne Says:
    June 21st, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    I would so totally like to be a Professor of Cunning!

25. 25.   Peter Coles Says:
    June 22nd, 2009 at 1:34 am

    I’m sure you qualify as foxy in any case

26. 26.   Sandy Says:
    June 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Take note, commentators on this site could be much more creative with their insults. You preening waddle- duck.

27. 27.   Eliza Says:
    June 28th, 2009 at 6:57 am

    Very funny!

    “He is pie-faced,” insisted William. “Come round to the Vienna Bon-Ton Bakery tomorrow and I will show you an individual custard-pie that might be his brother.” (from P.G. Wodehouse’s Heart of a Goof)

28. 28.   karen marie Says:
    June 28th, 2009 at 11:00 am

    If the interwebs are good for nothing else, it seems to be good for spreading Wodehouse.

    ‘Ah,’ he yelled, ‘you may mock, comrads; you may jeer and sneer; and you may scoff; but let me tell you that the movement is spreading every day and every hour. Yes, even amongst the so-called upper classes it’s spreading.’

    – Bingo Has A Bad Day

29. 29.   Matt Says:
    June 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Julianne,

    Hadn’t realized you were Woodhouse fan…

30. 30.   Prem Rao Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    Nice collection. Thanks.