I was sure somebody else would have gotten to this before me but I guess I’m the only one with direct access to the OED online thanks to my library card.
As far as I know, what you get online is the whole shebang - none of this abridged one-volume edition stuff. Suffice it to say that the OED online supports the basic research done by Unca Cecil and Jill - the words twit, twat, and twerp (or twirp do not have the meaning “pregnant goldfish”.
Herewith, hopefully within the limits of fair use, are the complete listings of meanings:
twit[sup]1[/sup]:
twit[sup]2[/sup]:
twit[sup]3[/sup]:
twat:
The buttocks?! Never heard that one myself. Although I suppose since the Aussies call a twat a “fanny”, it’s a fair trade.
twerp:
Twirp is, as noted in this week’s column, merely a variant spelling of twerp.
And there we have it. I’d certainly like to see if any other dictionaries have “pregnant goldfish” as a listing for any of these words, but as far as I’m concerned the OED is the ne plus ultra of references and all other dictionaries are edited by twerps who wouldn’t know a twit from a twat.
I will link to Cecil’s columns.
I will link to Cecil’s columns.
I will link to Cecil’s columns.
I will link to Cecil’s columns.
I will link to Cecil’s columns.
There is a Kurt Vonnegut book (Breakfast of Champions, I think), in which he explains that a “twerp” is a person who bites the bubbles of his own farts in a bathtub. While Vonnegut is often fairly tongue in cheek about this sort of thing, if I recall, it was in the context of defining a few other insults, some of which I already knew (or believed, at any rate) to be correct. Is it possible that this definition has source apart from that book?
I was always led to believe that a ‘prat’ was a pregnant goldfish. Maybe that’s just in the East Midlands.
Anyways, the word ‘twat’, one of my favourite words BTW, has three definitions that I know of:
[list=1]
[li]An idiot[/li][li]Female genitalia[/li][li]To hit or punch[/li][/list=1]
Errr… um 'kay. No one has really addressed the etymology yet.
I grew up thinking that “twit” meant “idiot” but my mother used to smack me if I said it (if I said “twat,” I’d have a two-week coma). She was under the impression that “twit” was a dirty word. After reading the column and these posts, I still have to ask… WHY???
I presumed that “twit” was a cleaned up version of “twat,” but ,even then, I don’t understand why “twat” is a naughty word.
and -
I have already addressed #1, I’ve heard #2 [sub]but I still don’t know WHY it means that[/sub], and for #3 –
When I was in high school, (class of '67) the school held a Twirp Dance. It was an acronym for The Woman Is Requested (to) Pay. It was sort of a Sadie Hawkins concept where the girls would ask the guy, buy the tix, drive to the dance, and, it was rumored, make the first pass.
The big surge in Feminism may have phased out the Twirp Dance, I dunno.
I always took the “stupid person” sense of “twit” to be a contraction of “nitwit”.
The story about “twit” meaning a pregnant goldfish reminds me of the urban myth that passed through my Midwest US junior high: that “dood” (dude) meant a hair on an elephant’s butt.
Far be it from me to leave a job unfinished. According to the OED:
The word twit comes from an Old English word, atwite meaning “to cast imputation upon, reproach”.
Twat is of obscure origin. (Yeah right, they just don’t wanna tell us the juicy stuff.)
Twerp is presumed to have come from the name T.W. Earp, who graduated from Oxford in 1911 and apparently was unpopular with one crowd for whatever reason. It’s attested to by no less a source than J.R.R. Tolkien and another author by the name of R. Campbell I’m not familiar with.