In Australia, we’ve got plenty of bad words that reflect the widespread discrimination.
First is “wog”, which refers to people of Mediterranean heritage. Another is “bogan”, which is a derogatory term for a lower-class person - it’s much like the American terms “white trash” and “redneck” or the British term “chav”. I’ve been called a wog numerous times and a bogan twice.
And for Lebanese people, there’s the shortening “Leb” or “Lebo”, which is a result of racist stereotypes of Lebanese people being gang bangers, thugs, jerks, and trashy in general. I’ve been called this even more, especially by Anglo-Aussies. It gets me angrier than a raging whirlpool.
Sorry, no cite, it was from my own Spanish Etymology and Universal History lessons and RAE doesn’t explain what roots mean, they just list them. Maybe your teacher got confused with imbecile, a word of Latin origin which means “person who cannot be responsible for himself due to a temporary or permanent mental deficiency” (children, morons, senile and females).
But in your links, they list “idiot” as “private person” - if you read this in the sense of “the opposite of a public man”, that is “the opposite of politician”, but it comes from a culture (not just Greek, but Athens’ democratic period) which also gave us sentences such as “Man is a political animal” and where any freeman was supposed and expected to take part in the political discurse, in the management of the city. A man who chose to stay “private” was choosing to stay “apolitical”, to not take part in the political discourse: it was someone who abstained, when he had the right to vote.
While this is true, I’m wondering if racial/ethnic slurs are quite what the OP was looking for. I’m sure every country in the world has their own curious way of collectively addressing others. Oh, and by the way you left out Pom, Nip, Yank, Frog, Coon (or Abo) amongst many others.
It’s my understanding that the word ‘bogan’ is almost exclusively a Victorian term, with ‘Westie’ being the equivalent in NSW. However, that being said, wear your BOGAN BADGE with pride dude. I do!!
I sort of assumed the OP already avoided racist, sexist, homophobic etc insults, but realised that many of the ones that were left referred to mental or physical disabilities and didn’t want to use those either. For that matter, even things like “small penis” are sort of horrible, as they don’t just punish the uber-macho, they punish anyone who is ACTUALLY below the recorded mean
FWIW, if the OP is looking for “policitally correct” insults, it’s really hard, but the best I can think of is (a) profanity (b) talking about something specific they’ve done (“you’re stupid” may be problematic but “that’s the stupidist thing I’ve ever seen” is hopefully offensive to them only) (c) detailed descriptions of them doing disgusting things…
