I hear the boys on That 70"s Show call each other “Dillweed” and “Dillhole.” I don’t remember hearing those used as insults until Beavis & Butthead.
Is this an anachronism? Or were these indults used in the 70’s?
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I don’t remember them before Beavis and Butthead either. The word “asshole” was used quite a bit, but I guess they can’t say that on TV.
I don’t remember the ‘dil’ insults. “fag” was quite popular, but again, probably shouldn’t even be part of nostalgia TV.
I was a teenager in Wisconsin in the 70’s. “Dork-face dill-rod” was a common insult.
(Isn’t the show set in Beliot? Our standard quip was “Beloit” was the sound of a fart in the bathtub)
I remember “the big kids” using it in the late 70’s in suburban Chicagoland. Specifically, “dillweed” and “dillwad”.
If the SDMB had a “Like” feature, I’d be clicking it right now.
‘Dill’ is often used on television as a substitute for ‘dick’. ‘Dickwad’ would have been an actual epithet. ‘Dillweed’ was probably a variation on that. ‘Dillrod’ was a variation of ‘dildo’. The modified forms appeared on television long after the 70s, but were used in real life by some back then.
It was used at my high school in the early 70’s.
I have no memory of “dill” from the any time period, and I even remember the 1960s.
It’s Point Place, which is supposed to be a suburb of Kenosha, apparently.
My great grandmother came from Beloit and I am descended from whom I believe was rather a big cheese there in the late 19th century, one David Merrill. It saddens me to think that this town is the subject of such low humor.
Roddy
I can’t place it to the 70s, but definitely to the 80s, and certainly well before Beavis and Butthead.
We used ‘dillweed’ in high school, but I am not from Wisconsin.
This is interesting. I had always thought that the ** 70’s Show** used dillhole or dillweed as a less objectionable replacement for Dildo.
I remember that calling somebody a dildo was a fairly common insult in the 70’s.
Sithy Tove did you and your homies smoke weed in the basement and convince your mom it was incense?
Kidding aside, does the show generally get it right?
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I heard that using this phrase as an insult was actually conceived by “Big Rosemary” interests in the ongoing spice wars.
I believe Point Place is actually ten miles from Springfield.
I can’t address the local peculiarities, but the general image of teenage life in the 70s is pretty good. They don’t seem to be interested enough in music and stereos, but getting high was a major part of teenage stoner life. It was the era of the generation gap, and parents often had no idea what their kids were doing when they weren’t looking.
My recollection, too. Also, I’ve heard the term “di¢kweed,” which “dillweed” might have euphemised.
The show was dead-on where Red and Kitty are seen from Eric’s POV with the wallpaper moving behind them. Carrying off being high around your parents was an art to be mastered. As most of you know, you were your own worst enemy: they’d ascribe pretty much anything you did or said to your simply being a stupid teenager. But if you could keep a reign on the marijuana-induced paranoia and not blurt out “I’m higher that a cat in heat’s asshole!” (my younger brother did just that, albeit on LSD, not reefer) you could sail through the school day and time at home without effort.
Some of the teachers who’d been in college in the late sixties/early seventies were on to us, but so long as we didn’t cause trouble, they just laughed us off.
But there was no claiming the smell was insence. Wisconsin farmers had grown hemp in WWII when the forign supply was cut off, so it wasn’t an alien odor. We spent a lot of time driving and driving around out in the country (another thing the show got right), getting high out there, or in cars in the school parking lot.
Later, my oldest brother did a few weeks in jail for traffic violations, and brought back the method called “jail hits;” where you’d take a pinch of weed with all the seeds and lumber cleaned out; in a pipe small enough to be snuck into jail in ones jockey underwear. You’d suck the entire hit in at once, and absord it all, only exhaling warm air afterward. That’s was how we smoked dope at home and later in the dorms.
And BTW, an ounce of weed from Mexico was $25/oz.
So while we didn’t wear onions on our belts, it really was a time that is long dead past.
I wasn’t alive in the 70s, but I remember the term from my childhood in the 80s. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure featured at least a few “dills” I believe.