This week’s theme
Shakespearean insults

This week’s words
dotard
sodden-witted
scullion
knotty-pated
gorbellied

“Words are the small change of thought.” ~Jules Renard
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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(NOT-ee-pay-tid)

MEANING:

adjective: Blockheaded or thickheaded.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English cnotta (knot) + pate (head). Earliest documented use: 1598.

USAGE:

“Only a knotty-pated beldame would think she could singlehandedly stop a war.”
Angeline Fortin; Taken; My Personal Bubble; 2014.

“Time was, everyone mauled Mr Trump. Boris Johnson, now the foreign secretary [now the prime minister], said he betrayed a ‘stupefying ignorance’ and branded him ‘unfit’ to lead America. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, turned to Shakespeare: ‘Trump’s a clay-brained guts, knotty-pated fool, whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch,^* right?’”
A Difficult Hole; The Economist (London, UK); Jan 28, 2017.
^*a very fat person

“Prince Henry: These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou claybrained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-catch.”
William Shakespeare; Henry IV, Part 1; 1623.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: