Posted by Pointy-Head on August 26, 2005 at 14:58:10
Should Exfamily erupt into a flame war any time soon and the coordinators decide we need a lexographer's list of well-researched insults related to the cranium, I found the following annotated compendium at http://www.nakokulma.net/keskustelu/index.php?PHPSESSID=12a849393c97b02d7eca501d17906cc1&topic=386.msg12415
Herewith, a lightly annotated list of the more common "-head" insults:
blockhead A stupid person; in effect, someone with a block of wood for brains. No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money (Dr. Samuel Johnson, 4/5/1776, in Boswell's Life of the great lexicographer, 1791). Incidentally, after the doctor told a stupid maid that she was one, Boswell commented: I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it (3/22/1776, op. cit.).
Dating to 1549 (OED), blockhead is one of the oldest of a large family of -head insults. They are closely related to the -brain family (see lamebrain).
addlehead (also addlebrain, addlecap, addlepate, or simply addled) Stupid people have been said to be addled upstairs since around 1600. The term suggests that the addlehead is a muddler, and that the muddle itself is putrid. Addle originally denoted stinking urine or other liquid filth.
airhead The term's popularity dates from the 1980s. A little early, aren't you, airheads? (Miami Vice, WNBC-TV, New York City, 9/16/84). The expression condenses the older [someone who] doesn't have anything between the ears but air. See also empty-headed below.
applehead The metaphor may also imply that the stupid one is an apple-knocker or hick. See also apple, bad, and costermonger.
beanhead Beans are small, of course.
blunderhead One who makes many mistakes or blunders, from the seventeenth century; perhaps an alteration of dunderhead, below.
bonehead One with a thick head, especially a stubborn person or one who acts without thinking, as does the baseball player who pulls a boner or bonehead play by, say, throwing to the wrong base; from 1908 (OED) but recorded half a century earlier as an adjective, boneheaded (1864, Dictionary of American English). Bonehead students may also bone up on subjects, but the verb comes from the name of the editor of a set of translations, Bohn's Classical Library, widely used by American college students in the early nineteenth century as ponies, i.e., trots. An exceedingly dumb person may be said to be bone from the knees up.
bubblehead An airhead, in effect. Bubble-head Henry Wallace ... (Westbrook Pegler, syndicated column, 3/11/52).
bullhead From the seventeenth century; an obstinate person as well as a stupid one.
cabbagehead The earliest example of a brainless cabbagehead in the OED comes from a work by the first Englishwoman to make a go of it as a professional writer; Thou foul filthy cabbage-head (Aphra Behn, False Count, 1682). See also kraut.
cerealhead A child's insult; see dumb/dummy.
cheesehead You let this cheesehead ... insult me ...? (Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, 1939). See also cheesy.
chowderhead The expression dates to the early nineteenth century and apparently continues the sequence of cholter-, jolter-, and jolthead, all with the same meaning. The last of these is the oldest (OED, 1533); it suggests that the stupid person got that way by being knocked on the head too often. Today, we would say that a jolthead is punch-drunk (making use of a term coined by Dr. Harrison S. Martland, Journal of the American Medical Association, 10/13/28).
chucklehead From the eighteenth century, and probably from the chuck or chock of wood, making this an exact equivalent to blockhead, but with overtones today of one who laughs foolishly when there is nothing to laugh at.
clodhead A lump of earth for brains; from the seventeenth century. See clod and clodhopper.
clunkhead Popularized by Arthur Godfrey on radio and television in the early 1950s (Dictionary of American Slang, 1975); possibly from clunker, for anything that is old, beat-up, and doesn't work well, as a rattletrap automobile.
cod's- head See cod.
cork-headed Light-headed; not much there.
deadhead Not only a stupid, boring person but from the 1840s one who doesn't pay his way, a freeloader, and in our own time a fan of the rock group, The Grateful Dead. A variation on the brainless theme: Most of the inhabitants were dead from the neck up (John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel, 1930).
dumbhead From the nineteenth century; a translation of the German dummkopf, where kopf = head and dumm = stupid. See also dumb/dummy.
dunderhead From the seventeenth century; perhaps from the Dutch donder, thunder, implying that the stupid one has been scared witless by a thunderclap, with help from the association with blunder. Shall I be called as many blockheads, numsculls, doddypooles,
dunderheads ... and other unsavoury appelations (Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1767).
empty-headed He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, 'She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed' (James Boswell, reporting on a conversation with Dr. Johnson, 4/26-28/1776, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791). The expression was more than a century old when Johnson used it (OED, 1650).
fathead From 1842. See fat.
featherhead (or -brain) Again, the noun, from 1845, seems to have developed from the adjective: Many Gentlemenes ... estates are deplumed by their featherheaded wives (Nathaniel Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, 1647). See also featherweight.
fiddlehead (or -brain) As empty as a fiddle. Fiddle-brained dates to 1650. See also fiddle-faddle.
flathead Greenhorns, flatheads! (Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, 1884).
fluffhead A person, usually a woman, not noted for vigorous intellect. See also fluff.
fuckhead An extremely dumb person, or one who is mixed-up emotionally, or one who keeps talking while the author is trying to concentrate (Eugene Landy, The Underground Dictionary, 1971). The underlying idea is that sexual excess addles one's brains. See also jerk.
giddyhead (or -brain or -pate) A form of dizzy, lightheaded stupidity; from the Middle English gidy, mad, foolish, and the Old English gydid, insane, as through possession by a god.
hardhead From the sixteenth century, frequently a person who is noted for obstinacy as well as stupidity; not to be confused with the modern hardhat, a construction worker, frequently a flag-waving conservative.
jarhead The head often is regarded as a pot of some sort; see crackpot, for instance. Jarhead has enjoyed other deprecatory meanings, especially in the American South, where it has been used to denote both a black male and a mule.
jughead The type specimen is the dimwitted Jughead Jones, sidekick of the hero of the Archie comics. Though usually regarded as a male epithet, jug actually began as a female name, a sixteenth-century pet form of Joan or Judith. See moll for more about this and other female names. Parallelling jarhead in modern use, a jughead also is a horse or mule that is hard to train.
knothead From 1940, at least. See knucklehead.
knucklehead Popularized in the U.S. Marines in World War II. Knothead: an unintelligent Marine; knucklehead: a knuckle lower than a knothead (American Speech, 10/48).
lardhead A variation on the fathead theme; twentieth century. See also lard.
loggerhead A log is a block of wood, of course, and loggerhead has been used to mean
blockhead since Shakespeare's time: Ah you whoreson loggerhead! (Love's Labor's Lost, 1588-94).
lunkhead A nineteenth-century Americanism, probably from lump, meaning a heavy, dull person, and perhaps the earlier (ca. 1400) lump of clay, meaning a soulless person. So the duke said these Arkansas lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare (Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, 1884). See also lunk.
meathead From the 1940s, an updating of fathead (see above), perhaps influenced by meatball; popularized by the TV show All in the Family (1971-83), whose lead character, Archie Bunker, continuously referred to his son-in-law as Meathead, except when he was really mad, in which case the mildly liberal son-in-law became a Polack pinko meathead. Indicative of the show's national impact in its second season: An angry new bride writes to an advice columnist saying she'd stopped speaking to her father after he kept introducing her new husband at the wedding reception as 'my new Meathead.' The columnist advises forgiveness (TV Guide, 9/3/83).
melonhead Apparently a twentieth-century elaboration of the nineteenth-century melon, with the same meaning, alluding to the seeming greenness of a stupid fellow (Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 1970). Watermelonhead also has been reported (American Speech, Fall-Winter 1974).
moonhead American, from the early twentieth century, rare; probably a derivative of
moonstruck. See lunatic.
mudhead Also a native of Tennessee (Dictionary of American English, 1838).
muddlehead (or -pate) The adjective, muddle-headed, dates to the eighteenth century, and the noun, muddlehead, to the nineteenth. A muddlehead is the same as a mudhead. The confused muddle apparently arises from the Middle Dutch moddelen, to make muddy.
mule-headed See mule.
mullethead A nineteenth-century Americanism, probably referring originally to the fish (compare cod's head); possibly influenced by the earlier British use of mull and mullhead to refer to a simpleton.
mushead See mush.
muttonhead Literally, a sheephead; from 1768 as mutton-headed (OED) and from 1804 as
muttonhead (Dictionary of American English). See also mutt.
noodlehead A noodle has been a simpleton or stupid person since the mideighteenth century and noodle by itself is slang for the head, making noodlehead something of a redundancy. The words ninnyhammer, noodle, and numscull are frequently bandied to and fro betwixt them (John Hawkesworth, The Adventurer, 1753). The OED says this sense of noodle is of obscure origin, but its coming into vogue at about the same time as macaroni seems more than coincidental. See also Yankee Doodle in Yankee. Noodle, in the sense of to act the fool, also appears to be the chief component of canoodle, to fondle, pet, or neck-an Americanism that dates to the middle of the last century and which is still encountered occasionally in dark places. Canoodlin'-A Maine nicety for pleasurable dalliance between the sexes, meaning mostly the casual kind-the kind in the bushes or behind the chip pile (1975, in Frederic G. Cassidy, ed., Dictionary of American Regional English, 1985).
peahead The reference is not so much to the vegetable as to the alleged size of the brain. Or, a variation on the theme: The Hon. Member disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head (Canadian Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau, quoted in Nancy McPhee, The Book of Insults, 1978).
peanuthead Another small vegetable. See also peanut.
pighead Stubborn as well as stupid; from 1620 (Ben Jonson) as pigheaded and from 1889 in the short form (OED). See also pig.
pinhead There's just as many pinheads on State Street as you'll find out in the woods (George Ade, Artie, 1896). How many pinheads can dance on an angel? (Los Angeles Reader, 4/1/83).
pointed (or pointy) head Bless your pointed little head (college slang, in American Speech, 10/48). Pointy head frequently is reserved for attacks on intellectuals, the implication being that their tapering heads would fit neatly into dunce caps. As an aide to Gov. George Wallace of Alabama and his national campaign director in 1970-71, I helped the Gov'nuh blame it all on those 'integrating, scallywagging, race-mixing, pointy headed liberals who can't even park their bicycles straight' (Tom Turnipseed, New York Times, 8/30/84). Despite the difference in shape, a pointy head is essentially the same as an egghead.
potatohead Not necessarily an Irishman; a redundancy, similar to noodlehead, since potato alone is slang for the head. Potato-headed is dated to 1832 in the OED. In modern, 1980s parlance, a person who spends too much time watching a TV, a.k.a. the boob tube, is a couch potato.
pothead Originally a smoker of marijuana, especially a heavy smoker, a weed head, but in extended use anyone who acts as if his or her brains are addled. Erica Buehrens said a problem youngster at Hunter [High School in New York City] is known as a 'J.D.' (as in juvenile delinquent), a 'druggie' or a 'pothead' (New York Times, 2/2/89). The pot that fills the head probably comes from the Mexican Spanish potiguaya, marijuana leaves. Other druggies include hophead (from 1911, where hop is opium) and the newer acidhead, basehead, and crackhead. See also junkie in junk.
puddinghead As pudding-headed from 1726 (OED) but best memorialized as the eccentric hero of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). A puddinghead is a soft head and pudding-hearted is an old term for one who is softhearted or squishy in a cowardly way. The idea probably comes from the oldest sense of pudding as a kind of sausage or a haggis in which entrails and other unmentionables are cooked inside an animal's stomach. There is also a strong suggestion here, however, that the puddinghead has become stupid through excess masturbation, also known as pulling [one's] pudding, where pudding is old slang for the penis (from the eighteenth century and probably from pudendum. See also jerk). The pudding in the child's rhyme, What's your name, / Pudding-and-tame, / Ask me again, / And I'll tell you the same, seems to have an entirely different origin, referring to a fiend or devil, Pudding-of-Tame, who is mentioned in Samuel Harsnet's Popish Impostures of 1603 (Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, 1959).
pumpkinhead (or -pate) A big vegetable without very much inside and another redundancy, a pumpkin also being a swelled-up, self-important, stupid person. The metaphor appears as early as 1607 in the form pumpion-headed. In Colonial America, pumpkinheads also had much in common theologically and politically as well as physically with the close-cropped Roundheads of the old country: Newhaven is celebrated for having given the name pumkin-heads to all New-Englanders. It originated from the Blue Laws, which enjoin every male to have his hair cut round by a cap. When caps were not to be had, they substituted the hard shell of a pumkin (Samuel Peters, A General History of Connecticut, 1781).
rockhead A hardhead; also in the phrase to have rocks in [one's] head. Dated to the 1950s in the Dictionary of American Slang, but probably substantially older. In baseball, to pull a rock is to make an error. Note the parallel to bonehead, listed earlier.
saphead The adjective, sap-headed, dates to the 1600s. See also sap.
shithead Of uncertain antiquity; not recorded until the twentieth century. Also known as shit-for-brains.
softhead From 1650 (OED). See also soft-brained in lamebrain.
spaghettihead Like a noodlehead. You wonder why kids are spacey? Watch enough of this and you turn into a spaghetti-head (Thomas Yacavone, of East Hartford, Connecticut, commenting on the wonders of MTV, New York Times, 8/25/87).
squarehead A German or Scandinavian; Australian slang, from 1903 (Farmer and Henley, Slang and Its Analogues); applied especially to German soldiers in World War I and later to anyone on the dull or stupid side. See also square.
tackhead A pinhead, in effect.
thick-headed (or -skulled or just thick) Thick is used here in the sense of dense, another word for describing mental as well as material states. Shakespeare recognized both meanings of thick: He's a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard (Henry IV, Part II, 1596-97). Thick-skulled, from the middle of the seventeenth century, predates thick-headed (1801) and thickhead (1871).
weak-headed See weak-.
woodenhead Another kind of blockhead: I ... saw the coronation procession, which seventy or eighty thousand woodenheads besides were looking at (Thomas Carlyle, letter to his wife, 9/8/1831).
wooly-headed (or -brained or -witted) Absentminded people have been said to be gathering wool since the sixteenth century and simpleminded people to be woolly-headed since the seventeenth. In nineteenth-century America, black people also were derided as woolly-heads, without reference to their intelligence, as were the abolitionists who sympathized with them. See also Uncle Tom. The original wool-gathering metaphor seems to go back to the act of collecting tufts of wool from hedges and bushes in sheep pastures-a task that apparently was assigned to children and the simpleminded.