Europeans use the term “wanker” and its foreign equivalents all the time. Some Bavarian was yelling the German term at the Munich shooter, and a friend of mind would use the Greek word for it which she learned from her husband.
There used to be an American epithet: jag-off. I used to hear it often, but not anymore. Apparently, it was a Chicago regionalism, and it’s not used very much anymore. How odd that a swear word would die out.
But why do Americans prefer their swear words to involve incest, anuses, and plain straight fucker?
Masturbation was just as much a no no here as in Europe. Maybe even more so.
Wait, is that the reason? Too much of a taboo even for swearing? To tell the truth, jag-off was rather mild, as swear words go.
“Jerkoff” seemed to be big – up until maybe the 90s? Like you said though it seemed to be divorced from the masturbatory reference and fairly mild: I heard it a lot as a child/teen before I knew it was a possible masturbation reference. However, I’m sure that many a “wanker” has been uttered without masturbation coming across the British speakers mind, carrying only the (self-indulgent) loser connotation.
Huh? Jagoff isn’t from Chicago. It’s from Pittsburgh. And it’s certainly alive and well around here.
I’ve also never heard of it being referred to as a euphemism for masturbation – it just means all around douchebag. In fact, most people don’t even consider it obscene.
I always thought ‘jag-off’ was just a made-up, watered-down, bowdlerization of ‘jerk-off’, made up specifically so it could be used on American TV. I think they now may allow calling someone a ‘jerk-off’ on TV as an insult, but you still can’t say, “He was jerking-off” as in actually masturbating. I don’t think you can even get away with that in a PG-13 movie.
And I wouldn’t say that ‘wanker’ is popular in the US. It has a decidedly British flair to it…
Jag-off may be a bowdlerization of jerk-off, but it was most certainly not made up for TV. During jag-off’s heyday in the '70’s, it would have been shocking to hear it on the tube. “Goddamn” was as dirty as it got, although the n-word did show up rarely on Norman Lear shows.
Yeah, this is not true, unless there is some enclave of anglophiles somewhere that I haven’t encountered.
I’m an ex-pat Brit, I’ve lived in various parts of the U.S. for almost 20 years. In the U.K., “wanker” occurs in almost every other sentence in blokey pub conversation. But in my experience it’s not part of anyone’s active vocabulary in the U.S. Indeed, if I use it myself in the U.S. it often raises a giggle or a comment - highlighting the fact that hearing the expression is unusual in the U.S. But I don’t recall having to explain the meaning to anyone, it seems to be widely understood.
JM, any cite for “wanker” being used by an American in a tv show or movie?
Unlike calling somebody a jerk-off, my sense is that in modern use calling them a jerk is not calling them a masturbator. But could it have been historically? If its not masturbation, what was the original relationship between the primary meaning of “jerk” and somebody being an obnoxious person? Is it just from the sense of “jerking somebody around”, pulling somebody this way and that without really helping them?
Interesting topic. Having read the thread, I guess I might push back at the OP’s premise. I have associated “jerk” with “jerk off” for some time. I definitely equate it with “wanker”. I hadn’t appreciated that jerk appears to be of 20th century origins (?) which would increase the likelihood of a relationship. So I think we do have a word for masturbator in use the same way. ??
But I get the basic premise: how curses evolve in a culture. I remember arriving in the UK and hearing sod off, bugger, wanker, etc in regular daily use - this was back in the 80’s. I remember thinking “what’s up with all this?” Then getting back home after a year and hearing fag, gay used negatively, etc, and realized we did it just as much back then. (Nice to see a bit of progress culturally on this front against these types of uses).
