Just add... Some Cox

Science!

So, when I started this little venture I knew that I would find inspiration from everyone. I mean, and you’ll have to forgive the hyperbole, EVERYONE will eventually use insult in some way or another. Despite this, I still wasn’t sure which direction I would head in after my first post. It can be a little daunting putting it all out there, trying to write something that is interesting, a little humorous, and doesn’t repeat itself too often, but it can be a little daunting putting it all out there, trying to write something that is interesting, a little humorous, and doesn’t repeat itself too often. I don’t expect may next subject to be handed to me.

Professor Brian Cox is a physicist, educator and musician – how much of the latter he does anymore I couldn’t tell you – and, from what I can tell, a pretty ace guy. I follow him on a couple of social media platforms and I tend not follow people I think are berks (a seemingly innocuous word, but there’s a reason I’m leading up to a write up on this one) so I tend to give more time to the folks I follow if they pop up on my ‘for you’ feed. So, there I was editing the last post and scrolling through twitter (no, Elon!), because I find it hard to concentrate on more than on thing at a time, and up pops this lovely little sentence from Professor Cox:

credit: https://x.com/ProfBrianCox/status/1915814815915773999 I love this man

Opening doors

Solid gold, amiright? Well, he was responding to a YouGov poll about which swear words Britons find most offensive. Out of the 48 words in the poll, I reckon I could put in the research and get a fair bit of writing out of all of them – jackpot! As much of a cesspool twitter has become of late, it tends to help me out in the world of insult. It helps that it is a cesspool. I don’t know why exactly it is I’m so bothered about it now being called X – probably something to do with the owner or age – but I continue to call it twitter out of protest. I should protest even further by replacing all ‘x’s with the word ‘twitter’ so I can feel some sort of superiority and control over things I have no superiority or control over. Ranting. Sorry.

The poll is fairly predictably, too. The words that are generally not the kind of things you’d say in front of someone’s gran are at the top, and the things uttered is hushed tones by the local youth pastor are at the bottom (though how the word ‘bum’ is offensive at all, I’ll never understand) so I think you can guess what’s there without actually reading it. But if you’re interested then the link is here.

Anyway, cheers, Professor Cotwitter. You did a bit of ground work for me, there. But for now I am going to concentrate on the subject he brought up: to knob or to nob? Though it is not a verb, I still wonder, after looking things up, whether is it actually a swear word.

I’m going to address something straight away: I already had some prior knowledge of the history of these words, if only by dint of having a walking encyclopaedia as a mother and the fact that she and my siblings happen to be very passionate with their vocabulary. The rule in place was to always understand the words that you use. No matter the economics, I never went without the essentials, and one of those came in two heaving volumes: A-K and L-Z. Now, if my colleagues were to read this they would find it laughable, because there is not a day goes by when I don’t brain-fart another word, name, place, or statistic by mistake and their common and charitable response is now “I know what you meant”.

Two idioms have been applied to me by previous partners: ‘you’ve got a face for the radio,’ and equally: ‘you are better on paper.’ There's more, don't worry.

Ahem.

Reading on, our famous physicist replied to a comment stating that it’s not spelt with a ‘k’ in Oldham, whereas another famous type, James May, suggests that the poll has the correct spelling with the 'k' included. I had an inkling that this would lead me in the regional direction, but I had to consult the oracle first. While the professor is famed for his Lancashire accent (Oldham and Manchester being historically in that county) I did have to check on the origins of the old Top Gear presenter, and it turns out he is from Bristol (or Brizzle, as some of my friends call it). While that is not in the etwittertreme south, it’s still southerly enough for me to see the divide. I decided to check it out.

Not really Gaskell, is it?

Before I go on, I do want to point out that someone responded to the Prof’s post citing that both Rik Mayall and Karl Pilkington both use ‘nob’ so that north and south divide could be utter tosh, but I still wanted to investigate.

I couldn’t find anything substantial on regional spelling of the word but, like a dog with a bone, I didn’t want to drop it and I scare myself awake breaking wind in my sleep.

The internet not being immediately helpful (probably my fault) I had to quickly think of how I could question the nation at large about what they think. Now, twitter, as a tool, is ace because it has world wide reach. My problem was that I have nine followers, have posted less than 50 times in the 12+ years of having an account, and have never sought after engagement before. I thought I’d better start from scratch and do a better job of it.

(psst. Check at the bottom of the page for a twitter link.)

I dangled the question: ‘In the conte[twitter]t of insult, how do you spell this word? Is it knob or nob? And does it depend on the region?’ out there and simply hoped I’d get a bite. What I got were warnings and a momentarily locked account instead – should have used Reddit. Well, it was out there after some well placed asterisks, so I’d see what came of it in a couple of weeks. Considering some of the awfulness I see on twitter, I honestly didn’t think I’d have an issue. If this blog will teach us anything, it is that I’m always learning something. Oh, and another word of warning: when opening a new twitter account with zero preferences, your ‘for you’ area gets filled with so much right-wing crap that you have no choice but to fly in circles.

…

…

…

Well, it had been over two weeks and I can say that I failed to get anywhere with twitter. Not a single reply, 'like' or repost, but I now know what that little graph icon means and I did get a few of them. I’ll figure out how to tweet properly one day if I ever want to sell things and make things like this my job, I might even bother looking up what being ‘ratioed’ is, but writing and research (no matter how absurd) in my limited free time does just fine for now. This post has largely been about twitter. Moving on!

Moving on

So, the north/south divide issue seemed like a dead duck with a lack of public consensus to back it up, but, as I’ve mentioned, I had some prior knowledge and it turns out this prior knowledge still alludes to a divide. The free OED has five different meaning of the word ‘knob’ – four of which are still in use. Being that this is an insult, lets concentrate on the nouns, preferably the earliest and latest entries (the latter being 1676!).

In around 1405, the word knob was used to describe a “rounded lump or protuberance, and related senses”(https://www.oed.com/dictionary/knob_n?tab=meaning_and_use#40004568). Now, we all know that when we call someone a ‘knobhead’ we know precisely what we are saying here in Blighty, so when searching through I settled of the definition that fitted the best WITHOUT going to the slang/informal section.

Being that I would like to know where these words originated, heading straight to that section would deny me joy of jumping to other conclusions and investigations and, essentially, would defy the ruddy point of this blog. I need whimsy!

In order to fit in with the physicality of the image that accompanies the word I decided that anything that sounded like something clearly visible and accessible sticking out of another thing did the job (so to speak) would be the best fit. A tenuous link? Maybe, but I think it fits. I also seem to remember some old Victorian cartoon that made reference to genitals by use of everyday items. I’ll have to find that one.

Looking at the latest incarnation of the meaning in the free OED pointed back to 1676. This is the version that echoed my understanding, back when I was in primary school, and had decided to copy the words that I heard and then needed to learn the rule. It meant “A person of some wealth or social distinction” (link). I hear the bitter strings of my bias playing again…

The OED now asking for money to get further clarification, I thought I would check the Merriam Webster and Cambridge dictionary to see if they had a clue. It’s nice to see what others think, after all.

Having to adjust for cost, Cambridge gave me the definition I thought, I knew, I was looking for. It turns out using “nob” in Cambridge does the job.

credit: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nob Also, what's this 'broligarch'? XD

Thinking about it, I have spent enough time north of Birmingham in the last decade and a half to understand that the terms “posho”, “toff”, and even “aristocrat” aren’t generally used by Mancunians to describe themselves (I heart Manchester, btw), and this really lent itself to the north/south divide when it came to the spelling, but it was nowhere near concrete. Still, I had decided my lived etwitterperience was enough to make this distinction without looking at landed and urban elites. Heaven forbid.

Conclusion?

I was okay with this. This felt right. It felt like I had made the connection and cleared up some age old mystery. I thought about all the northerners I knew, inside and out of my family, and wondered what they would make of this. I sat there and it went around in circles until the inner analytical voice said something like this:

You’ve always heard that “nob” was a shortening of “nobility” and, if used in a disapproving way, would end up being an insult. “Knob”, through being a homophone, was again an insult, but this time it regarded parts of the male genitalia as the basis for that insult (I’ve seen them. They’re weird. Or maybe just mine is.) But the same word uttered out-loud, where a difference in spelling would not usually be an issue, may still have some societal bias depending on the regional origin of the speaker. The connection allows us to, when calling someone a “k/nob”, see that person through phallic representation rather than just mock them based on their class, and through frequent use of this homophone as an insult the word ‘knob’ and ‘nob’ have now become one and the same.

Then I realised that I’ve been called a nob a couple of times, both playfully and not, by some of my northern/southern/Welsh friends and I’m as close to nobility as a puppy is to a shark, so it was all likely nonsense.

Conclusion yet?

Look, this isn’t some age old mystery, and I’m not dropping revelations like a buttery fingered vicar, but it interested me and I thought I could find something deeper to it. I reckon I still could, but I would need input from others and a much larger sample size than bloody ZERO from twitter. Some of you readers (if you built it, etc…) may have been reading this and screaming that the word is used in the good ol’ U-S-of-A in reference to tycoons (see: Nob Hill), but I wanted to stick to this side of the pond and, let’s face it – it’s all money.

Down the rabbit hole I go again and decide to ask the oracle simply (with safe search on) “where does the term ‘nob’ come from?” In an effort to not use Wikipedia as a solid source, I looked elsewhere and found this beauty:

“The great mogul emperors ruled India from about 1580 to 1708. Their empire covered most of north and central India, and this area was divided into several provinces. Each province was ruled by a deputy - the Hindi word for deputy being nawab. When these people returned to Britain - having made a lot of money - the word became anglicised to 'nabob'. The words snob and nob are diminutive forms of the word. They were not liked (hence being called snobs), and so tended to band together.”

- Clive Williams OBE, www.wargravehistory.or.uk

(If you have an interest in Berkshire history, click on the link.)

I...was...not anticipating an intervention form the East India Company. I thought nobility would have been the root of it and the rest was just scorn and willies. How I was wrong. It occurred to me that my ignorance of world history has completely barred me from something that interests me more as I get older: how we use language. New word meant more research.

I found an interesting article written about a history professor called Christina Smylitopoulos, in which she states:

credit: https://news.uoguelph.ca/2012/11/prof-explores-dark-side-of-nabobs/

By the layout it appears to be written by Christina Smylitopoulos, but I’ve probably got that wrong (kudos for the continuous perspective if it was).

That’s odd. Whenever I think of modern snobbery, it is usually them that quite easily state that others are drunk and lazy – but I think I may have to put a pin in this before I get on a small rant about elites again.

Conclusion now?

That smell could either be the smell of vindication / validity, but could equally be because I might be talking out of my lower orifice. If you have a better insight, I’ll be more than happy to listen. I am, after all, on a journey to learn and evolve. Yes, the word ‘nob’ may be a shortening of nobility, and yes the word ‘nob’ may have come from the anglicised ‘nabob’, and even if you take the American meaning it all seems to point to the same conclusion that the term is a class-based derogative, whether that was born into or bought.

That being said, I can’t think of more than a couple of people that use the term with that distinct meaning in modern society. I honestly feel that there is a chance it is used with the echo of a class-based insult, and whether that is in a collective subconscious or not I don’t know. Why I believe that the phallic homophone is now more likely the immediate insult that comes to mind when the word is used is between me and Freud, but some actual humans have been asked since the twitter tumble-weeds have also backed me on this. That being said, I asked a colleague what she thought of when she used the word (which she does with wonderful eloquence, by the way) and she said that she didn’t straight away think of male genitalia, but the word she instead used which I have recently been told is yonic. I’ll look it up if you do.

There I was thinking my first post would be the only long one due to the ancient Sumerian research and not having a clue. Maybe they'll all be like this. Funny how things work out.

You could have likely got the same answers from Reddit or Quora and saved ten minutes of reading, but I’m documenting my journey and I do stuff awkwardly. Thanks for sticking with me.

Conclusion

TL:DR – toffs are nobs and knobs. And you can have your ‘x’ back.

https://x.com/apinchofinsult