Well, “treppenwitz” isn’t really an English word, but we need one like it. In German, it’s literally “staircase wit,” meaning that devastating rejoinder you think of after you’ve left the scene of the debate.

Yes, whether we like it or not, debates are approaching and the candidates are getting plenty of advice from the pundits. In his case, don’t be an insulting bully, in her case, don’t be a condescending scold. (Do we ever hear a man described as a scold? Faultfinder seems like a gender-neutral synonym in my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, but the alternative shrew seems to capture the flavor. If we follow that trail, we end up with vixen, harpy and fishwife.)

 They say there was a time when our political and artistic leaders delivered insults with class. William Faulkner allegedly remarked that Hemingway “has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Clarence Darrow said, “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

Not to disregard the women, Mae West gets credit for innumerable jibes, including, “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” In a review of The Cardinal’s Mistress, by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote, “This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force.” As a writer, Parker was in the business of saying funny things, like “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

Until this election, it had never occurred to me that a politician is in the business of insulting people. But wait. Maybe it’s always been true. The website www.insults.net lists pages of insults attributed to Winston Churchill. He described Clement Atlee as “a modest man, who has much to be modest about …. An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door opened, Atlee got out.” Are these remarks off the cuff? Could it possibly be true that Lady Astor said “Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee,” and he managed to think fast enough to reply, “Madam, if I were your husband I would drink it.”

Churchill is widely regarded as a writer. He was said to be fond of “paraprosdokians,” those figures of speech where the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising, frequently humorous. Example: “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.” Or, “If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” Maybe he really popped off those clever one-liners, or maybe he saved them up in  a little notebook.

Based on events thus far, I’d advise our current candidates: “Don’t try it.”

 

 

 

 

Word of the Week – treppenwitz

 

Well, “treppenwitz” isn’t really an English word, but we need one like it. In German, it’s literally “staircase wit,” meaning that devastating rejoinder you think of after you’ve left the scene of the debate. Yes, whether we like it or not, debates are approaching and the candidates are getting plenty of advice from the pundits. In his case, don’t be an insulting bully, in her case, don’t be a condescending scold. (Do we ever hear a man described as a scold? Faultfinder seems like a gender-neutral synonym in my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, but the alternative shrew seems to capture the flavor. If we follow that trail, we end up with vixen, harpy and fishwife.)

 

They say there was a time when our political and artistic leaders delivered insults with class. William Faulkner allegedly remarked that Hemingway “has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Clarence Darrow said, “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

 

Not to disregard the women, Mae West gets credit for innumerable jibes, including, “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” In a review of The Cardinal’s Mistress, by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote, “This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force.” As a writer, Parker was in the business of saying funny things, like “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

 

 

Until now, it had never occurred to me that a politician is in the business of insulting people. But wait. Maybe it’s always been true. The website www.insults.net lists pages of insults attributed to Winston Churchill. He described Clement Atlee as “a modest man, who has much to be modest about …. An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door opened, Atlee got out.” Are these remarks off the cuff? Could it possibly be true that Lady Astor said “Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee,” and he managed to think fast enough to reply, “Madam, if I were your husband I would drink it.”

 

Churchill is widely regarded as a writer. He was said to be fond of “paraprosdokians,” those figures of speech where the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising, frequently humorous. Example: “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.” Or, “If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” Perhaps he really popped off those clever one-liners.

 

Based on the preliminaries, I’d say to our current candidates: “Don’t try it.”