by Kevin Burton
My assigned task was to write past-due notices to customers. Dry enough, but I had some fun with it.
I was working as an office assistant at a photo lab in Columbus, Ohio. We were in the not-so-busy season, taking care of things that didn’t get done during the busy season.
I have no recollection of what I wrote in the remittance letters.. But I remember as my boss walked past my desk, I put on a busy and serious look, typing furiously. I looked up and asked him, “How do you spell scallywag?” before looking down again and typing away.
This made him pause to say the least. I kept a straight face as long as I could, but soon broke down and told him I was only kidding. These were good customers and we wouldn’t call them scallywags, not in print anyway.
I present this memory to go along with what I call the bad actors list. Merriam-Webster dictionary called it “A Handy Guide to Ruffians, Rapscallions, Cads and More” and “22 Charming Words for Nasty People”
As you will see over the course of these three planned posts, some of these don’t belong on the list. They aren’t what I would call nasty in any way.
Also, I now find out, years after my little joke, that there are at least two ways to spell scallywag. For the variant spelling and more, read on:
Ruffian: a brutal person; bully
Ruffians specialize in roughness, and between the 16th and 18th centuries, they were also synonymous with pimps – men who solicit clients for prostitutes.
Smellfungus: a captious critic
Our language contains a glorious profusion of words for critics of all stripes. We have terms for an inferior critic (criticaster), a jealous critic (zoilus), and a severe critic (aristarch). None of them has quite the same bite as smellfungus, a lovely morsel of an insult, which comes from the name of a character in Laurence Sterne’s 1768 book, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.
Scalawag: a mischievous and often morally corrupt person
Also spelled scallywag, this term may originally have referred to an animal of very little value. After the Civil War, scalawag came to describe a white Southerner acting in support of reconstruction governments, often in pursuit of private gain; it was used to insult Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.
The origin of scalawag is unknown, but one theory suggests there’s a link to the Scottish scoloc, a first-born son given to the Church to educate.
Knave: a tricky deceitful fellow
Shakespeare was particularly fond of the word knave – it crops up throughout his plays. One of the oldest words in English, knave comes from the Old English cnafa, meaning “boy” or “male servant.”
Rapscallion: rascal; an idle worthless person
There are no scallions in rapscallion. Rapscallion is an alteration of rascallion, which is itself an irregular formation of rascal, a term born in an Old French dialect word meaning “to scrape, clean off.”
Backfriend: a seeming friend who is secretly an enemy
The enemy posing as a friend has been a common enough creature that we have had a word for it for five hundred years or so. More recently, we’ve seen a rise in usage of the portmanteau frenemy (“one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy.”)
Although frenemy is of far more recent vintage than backfriend, it is not a creation of the 21st century. Frenemy can be found as far back as 1891, when the Norton, Kansas newspaper The Norton Champion published an article that included the following: “During an hour’s wily interview, he permitted us to surmise that while not in the hands of his frienemies himself, it is an opportunity freighted with big import so shelf-worn politicians and subsidized statesmen will not be forced to run for office against their professed wishes.”
Gobemouche: a credulous person; especially one who believes everything he or she hears
Gobemouche is evidence that certain unpleasant things, when cloaked in the veneer of French, can sound rather pleasant. The word rolls off the tongue easily, and sounds quite lovely; however, if we look at the etymology it more or less translates to “fly gulper” (from the French gober, meaning “to swallow whole”, and mouche, meaning “fly”).
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