Donald Trump will be familiar with most abuse but the latest – “wazzock” – might leave him flummoxed. Northern slang for a stupid or annoying chump, wazzock had its moment in the corridors of power on Monday, when Conservative MP Victoria Atkins told the Westminster Hall debate over whether the Republican presidential candidate should be barred from Britain: “If he met one or two of my constituents in one of the many excellent pubs in my constituency, then they may well tell him he is a wazzock for dealing with this issue in this way.”
Atkins, a 39-year-old barrister, may have revived wazzock because it was a popular insult in the laddish 1990s, or due to professional caution. As Alex Games writes in Balderdash & Piffle: “No one is going to take someone to court for calling them a ‘wazzock’: it’s not a high-octane term of abuse.”
Games thinks its appeal lies in its “northern bluntness” and its mix of familiar sounds. “The ‘wazz’ contrasts ironically with the swiftness of ‘whizz’, and the ending ‘-ock’ reminds us of other words like pillock.” While “pillock” has ancient origins – a contraction of pillicock, which was used in the 16th century and came from a Scandinavian word for penis – wazzock’s etymology is unknown, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which places its origins in the 1980s. It is thought to have been popularised by the northern comedian Tony Capstick but the comic, poet and radio presenter Mike Harding lays claim to its first usage in print, in the 1970s.
“I used it when I was a kid,” says Harding. “It was fairly common in the north, in Lancashire and Yorkshire.” According to Harding, it takes its name from the habit of medieval kings to “take a crap on a shovel”. The royal turd would be “wazzed” out of the window and the wazzock was the tool for performing this operation.
It sounds too good to be true, I say. “It can’t possibly not be true,” replies Harding, “It’s like the old English word ‘mattock’.”
Wazzock was memorably used by southerner James Blunt to describe shadow culture minister Chris Bryant, who dared suggest he was one of many performers from a “privileged” background. What does Harding think of Tories appropriating this word? “They’ve taken pretty much everything else off us. They are now stealing our swearwords because they haven’t the brains to coin any new-minted terms themselves. Bastards.”
Is wazzock a good way to describe Trump? “There are no words foul enough,” says Harding.
