Mouth Breather and Egg Sucking Dog,
What is the background or history of these derogatory terms?
I have absolutely no official answer to this, but I do know that in R. A. LAfferty’s novel Okla Hannali about the Choctaw Indians in the early nineteenth century, characters frequently accuse each other of sucking eggs. The impression I got was that sucking eggs was a woman’s task, so a man who accused another man of sucking eggs was calling him a girly man.
I always assumed that “sucking eggs” was a clean alternative to a more penis-oriented accusation.
Mouth-breather is self-explanatory - no one looks terribly bright with their mouth hanging open.
My first encounters with “egg-sucking” were in relation to hunting dogs that stole eggs from the chickens. While I have no evidence against the idea that it is an order to lick testicles, the fact that the phrase “no 'count egg suck dog” appears to go back to the nineteenth century implies (to me) that any later use was simply a folk etymology applied by people who were raised in cities after their farm-raised parents brought it in from the country.
Mouth-breather comes from the notion (disputed by some) that people of a certain lower level of intelligence tend to not keep their mouths closed during non-talking activity. It is paralleled by the expression “slack jawed yokel.”
Speaking as someone with some breathing problems and a 148 IQ I don’t apprciate the association of mouth breather with stupidity. But I think it’s more that stupid people are so clueless that they forget to close their mouths, or think far enough to see how they will look to other people. Matter of self awarness.
Mouth breather is a popular question round these parts.
I reference four earlier threads in that one.
And then there’s this:
And a song recorded by Johnny Cash.