The Omnivore: July: Foraging For Tasty Arts Tidbits

Here in the commonwealth, we pride ourselves on our way with insults; belittling someone - friend or foe - is practically an inbred reflex. Perhaps that's why so many caustic comedians come from this region, none more hallowed than Masshole patron saint Denis Leary. Now one of our own, Hadley linguist Stephen Dodson, has coauthored a raucous compendium of putdowns from across the ages and continents. Sadly, the most striking thing about reading it is the creeping realization that our version of lacerating wit is merely average at best.

Many of the slurs in Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit (Perigee, $13, out 7/7), by Dodson and Oxford University scholar Robert Vanderplank, are unprintable here, but sound cozily, filthily familiar once translated from Latin or Estonian. (Afrikaners, by the way, win the award for saying the most anatomically unacceptable things about mothers.) Most others are a quirky delight: Derisive Icelanders call each other prumphænsn ("fart-chicken"); in the Telugu-speaking parts of India, a numbskull is koti gudda ("the red ass of a monkey"); and German wimps are warmduscher ("warm-shower-takers").

By comparison, our own arsenal of epithets—revolving around sex, stupidity, and random F-bombs—feels more offensively stale than bitingly offensive. Chalk it up to the novelty of foreign saltiness, but it's better to think of this book as a gauntlet thrown down. Can't we step it up a notch and reclaim our crown by focusing more on the wit than the laceration? Otherwise, our stature in the global insult village risks being, as the Welsh say, fel piso dryw yn y môr ("like a wren's piss in the sea").