On Thu, 1 Nov 2007, Tim wrote:
> The relationship between the literal meaning of an insult and its
> connotations can be pretty indirect ("motherfucker" seems like it has a
> particularly indirect relationship ).
FWIW, many people have argued that the opposite is the case -- that the origins of motherfucker as an insult are unusually clear. It seems clearly to have originated as one of the go-to insults for black men. And of all many crimes the white men committed against black men during the time of slavery, surely one of the most outrageous was the rape of their mothers -- a crime whose evidence was ever before them, etched in the many shades of their lightened skin.
It is true however that insult terms often drift far from their origins. and perhaps especially in milieux where "bad" means "good." Perhaps that is why motherfucker, and the other number one charged insult among black men, have actually verged so far that they can even even be used as terms of comradeship (by the right people, to the right people, said in the right way). But I don't think the subtleties of social positioning and irony obscure the origins of why a motherfucker was once the baddest thing anybody could think of. If you ever read the novels of Chester Himes, where he replaces motherfucker with mother raper, it's remarkable how it returns juice to the word.
Michael