Doofus

In a search for socially acceptable insults, sausage-brain, banana-face and badger-kisser are my personal favourites. The combination of loosely connected words lightens the mood and helps to quell my anger although I worry sometimes that these insults are more suited to someone a quarter of my age.

  William Shakespeare was the master of the insult: "Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage (As You Like It);"Thou appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" (Hamlet); "Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass in it" (Troilus and Cressida). It would be great to be able to draw upon such a vast array of insults to suit any situation. Thoughtful insults would surely make the world a better place. Whilst perhaps the ideal would be an insult-free world, there is surely occasion to shout, "Your utterances make less sense than an dalmation's cock-a-doodle-doo" when someone claims something absurd.

  Insults fads come and go - I was particularly fond of 'spanner' as a teenager - and one that bore a brief prominence in my life in the early noughties was doofus. I'm not sure I ever shouted the word in anger myself, but it certainly invaded my ears on occasional occurrences. It is reckoned by wordy types that the word comes from the Scottish insult doof meaning fool and goofus (goof) which comes from the French word goffe meaning stupid. Combining insults to create new words is perhaps the way forward: dumbecile, looncompoop, dundertwerp, twitnoramous are all potential additions to the dictionary of the future. Treating people the way you would like to be treated yourself is a pretty fine principle for life and I would be happy to be called any of these names when I do something particularly foolish although I wouldn't like any of them to become my actual name as was the fate from birth of Ducktales' star Doofus Drake.