13 June 2003 12:58 [link]
ponce, continued
Thinking about the use of the word "ponce" as an insult, as I did yesterday, made me think about insults whose meanings I hadn't understood, and phrases which turned out to be rather ruder than expected.
I suppose I'd always thought of "ponce" as being "a camp man" rather than "a homosexual man". But is that the general perception? Now I wonder if it's rather worse than I'd imagined. Is it akin to calling someone a queer? "Queer" seems to have more vicious overtones to me. I wouldn't call someone - gay or not - a queer. Or is it similar in tone to "bastard"? Neither has the social stigma it once had. "Bastard" is, more or less, socially acceptable as an insult.
I don't really want to get into dreadful, politically correct, middle-class handwringing, though. But equally I'd hate to be insensitive in my insults, if that's not an oxymoron.
I had an equal crisis when I found out that "couldn't give a toss" referred to masturbation. I mean, I'd been saying I didn't give a toss for ages. Or when I found out (only recently) that "flid" referred to "thalidomide". Now there's a term only schoolchildren could use.
While talking about this with Kate on Wednesday, she told me she got into trouble as a child when she, quite innocently, told someone to "get stuffed".
Language can be such a minefield.
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