Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

I couldn't get into the site to read the piece (I have a password somewhere), so you may have touched on this, but "You're all dipsticks" was the denatured phrase used in place of "You're all assholes" in the 1979 Mork and Mindy sendup of est in which David Letterman played the mercenary founder of Ellsworth Revitalization Konditioning, or erk. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mork_Goes_Erk)

Geoff

> From: Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Date: December 8, 2011 7:31:57 AM PST
> Subject: Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs
>
>
> An overview of "dip"-based pejoratives, inspired by finding out that some
> people use "dip(h)thong" as an insult (subscription required):
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/3058/
>
> This 2009 Language Log post by Chris Potts had some useful reader comments:
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=978
>
> Neal Whitman

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org