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The dark COMEDY podcast about everything mysterious. From unsolved history & true crime to folklore & the supernatural, nothing is off the table. Listener discretion is always advised. All aboard!
Episodes
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Oh Boy! We've decided to give you passengers a sneak peak into the Midnight Train's First Class Patreon BONUS episodes and THIS ONE is kind of a big deal. Listen to the episode. Look at the date. Maybe Google a couple of things and then you'll get it. Make sure to let us know what you found by joining our private Facebook page:
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There's so much more where this came from and will continue for the foreseeable future, because they can't stop us!! MUHUHAHAHAHA
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Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
What in the sassafras happened to the colonists at Roanoke? Did they just find cooler people than the English folk that seemingly left them there to die? Was it aliens? What's with the silver cup and who the hell was John White?
Let's dive into another historically mumble mouthed episode and see where the nonexistent tracks lead us!
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Thanks for listening.
Tuesday Nov 22, 2022
Tuesday Nov 22, 2022
Yep! We're talking about the mysterious STONEHENGE! Monolithic, glorious and... what the hell is it? Did aliens create a musical instrument? Is it a gateway to the center of hell? Is it Mother Earth's "special spot"?
Let's discuss!
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Thanks for listening!
Monday Nov 07, 2022
Monday Nov 07, 2022
Monday Oct 31, 2022
Monday Oct 31, 2022
Happy Halloween!
This year we decided to recite paranormal stories from our passengers, as well as some stories from some of our podcast friends;
The Phantom Jukebox Podcast
Happy Hour Podcast
Yuh Like That? Podcast
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Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
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Yep....as recently as THIS YEAR (2022), there have been issues with Satanic rituals and everything involved with it. The question is, and always will be... is/was it real?
Let's get into it!
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Monday Oct 17, 2022
Monday Oct 17, 2022
Creepy Russia.
We dive deep into the history of Russia before getting creepy and telling you some of the countries most unnerving tales, just in time for the Halloween season.
Head to www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com for everything related to the show.
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Monday Oct 10, 2022
Monday Oct 10, 2022
Bible John is an unidentified, alleged serial killer who is thought to have murdered three young women between 1968 and 1969 in Glasgow, Scotland. Was this murderer an over zealous religious redeemer, two killers playing the odds, a police officer or something else?
Climb aboard and let's dive into the story of "Bible John."
Listener discretion is always advised.
www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com
"America's Second Favorite Podcast"
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Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Hello Passengers! Thanks for listening!
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Units 731 is a hardcore metal band formed in Pittsburgh, PA, in 2005. The band combines death metal, hardcore, and slam to create a heavy and chaotic sound for which Pittsburgh bands are notable. Influences include Dying Fetus, All Out War, Irate, and Built Upon Frustration.
Ok, wait… wrong notes. Um… ok, here it is. The Unit 731 we're here to talk about is short for Manshu Detachment 731. It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that participated in lethal human experimentation and the production of biological weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Manchukuo's government was dissolved in 1945 after the surrender of Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. The territories claimed by Manchukuo were first seized in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 and then formally transferred to the Chinese administration in the following year.
For those of you wondering, "what in the Jim Henson hell is a puppet state," well, according to Wikipedia, a puppet state "is a state that is legally recognized as independent but, in fact, completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders. Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, but a foreign power effectively exercises control through financial interests and economic or military support.
The United States also had some puppet states during the Cold War:
- Cuba (United States), (before 1959)
- Guatemala (United States), (until 1991)
- South Korea A.K.A. United States Army Military Government in Korea (United States), (Until 1948)
- The Republic of Vietnam A.K.A. South Vietnam (United States), (Until 1975)
- Japan A.K.A. Allied Occupation of Japan (United States), (Until 1952)
Some of the most infamous war crimes committed by the Japanese military forces were caused by this Unit. Internally dehumanized and referred to as "logs," humans were regularly used in Unit 731 testing.
Some atrocious experiments included: disease injections, controlled dehydration, hypobaric chamber experiments, biological weapons testing, vivisection, amputation, and weapons testing. Babies, children, and pregnant women were among the victims. Although the victims were from various countries, the majority were Chinese. Additionally, Unit 731 created biological weapons employed in regions of China, including Chinese cities and towns, water supplies, and farms, that were not held by Japanese soldiers.
Up to 500,000 people are thought to have been murdered by Unit 731 and its related activities. It was called "The Kwantung Army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department." Unit 731 was first established by the Kenpeitai military police of the Empire of Japan. General Shiro Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army, took control and oversaw the unit until the war's conclusion. Ishii and his crew used the facility, constructed in 1935 to replace the Zhongma Fortress, to increase their capabilities.
Up to the end of the war in 1945, the Japanese government generously supported the initiative. Facilities for the manufacturing, testing, deployment and storage of biological weapons were controlled by Unit 731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. While researchers from Unit 731 detained by Soviet troops were convicted in the Khabarovsk war crime trials in December 1949, those seized by American forces were secretly granted immunity in exchange for the information obtained during their human experimentation.
As if we needed more bullshit to make us question the tactics of the U.S. government, The U.S. quelled the talk of the human experiments and paid the accused of doing it an actual salary. So then, similar to what they did with German researchers during Operation Paperclip, the Americans siphoned and took their knowledge of and expertise with bioweapons for use in their own program for biological warfare. Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because biological weapons were banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon.
This begs the question, does this type of government appropriation, paying off and hiring those guilty of explicit acts on humans to use their knowledge to create our own versions of what they committed, considered an act "for the greater good?" Does allowing these turds' immunity to extract their heinous experience worth it?
Japan's occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion. Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese advantage of separating the research station from their island but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects. They viewed the Chinese as no-cost research subjects and hoped they could use this advantage to lead the world in biological warfare. Most research subjects were Chinese, but many were of different nationalities.
Sound familiar? Maybe a precursor to what a bunch of mind fucked Nazis attempted AND SUCCEEDED IN DOING to so many Jews and Jewish sympathizers?
In 1932, Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki, was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit," for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, because Western powers were developing their own programs. Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who eventually served as Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945, was one of Ishii's most fierce supporters inside the Army. In 1915, during World War I, Koizumi and other Imperial Japanese Army officers were inspired by the Germans' successful use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres (EEPRUH), in which the Allies suffered 5,000 fatalities and 15,000 injuries as a result of the chemical attack. As a result, they joined a covert poison gas research committee. As a result, unit Togo was started in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a hamlet on the South Manchuria Railway 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Harbin.
To start the tests on those in good health, prisoners were often well-fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and perhaps even wine. The inmates were then starved of food and drink and had their blood drained over many days. Finally, it was noted that their health was declining. Shocker.
Some were vivisected as well. For those who don't watch or listen to disturbing documentaries, vivisection is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structures. Others had been purposefully exposed to the plague bacterium and other pathogens. Ishii had to close down Zhongma Fortress due to a jailbreak in the fall of 1934 that jeopardized the facility's secret and an explosion in 1935 that was thought to be sabotage. Then he was given permission to relocate to Pingfang, which is 24 km (15 mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility.
Emperor Hirohito signed a decree in 1936 approving the unit's growth and its incorporation as the Epidemic Prevention Department into the Kwantung Army. It had bases at Hsinking and was split into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit." The units were collectively referred to as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army" from August 1940 onward. Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans." The decree also mandated the construction of a chemical warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department, and a biological warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later known as Manchuria Unit 100). (subsequently referred to as Manchuria Unit 516).
Sister chemical and biological warfare organizations known as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units were established in significant Chinese towns during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and Unit 9420 in Singapore were among the detachments. Ishii's network, which at its height in 1939 had control over 10,000 people, was made up of all these organizations. In addition, Japanese medical practitioners and academics were drawn to Unit 731 by the opportunity to perform human experiments, which was highly unusual, and the Army's robust financial support.
Experiments
Human subjects were used in studies for a specific project with the codename Maruta. Test subjects were selected from the local populace and were referred to as "logs," as in the phrase "How many logs fell?" Since the facility's official cover story to local authorities was that it was a timber mill, the personnel first used the word as a joke. The initiative was internally known as "Holzklotz," which is German, meaning log, according to a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army working in Unit 731. Nothing like dehumanizing the poor people you're experimenting on.
Another similarity was the cremation of the "sacrificed" participants' corpses. Additionally, Unit 731 researchers published some findings in peer-reviewed publications while posing as non-human primates termed "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys" to do the research.
According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris:
"The Togo Unit employed gruesome tactics to secure specimens of select body organs. If Ishii or one of his co-workers wished to do research on the human brain, then they would order the guards to find them a useful sample. A prisoner would be taken from his cell. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal."
Nakagawa Yonezo, professor emeritus at Osaka University, studied at Kyoto University during the war. While there, he watched footage of human experiments and executions from Unit 731. He later testified about the "playfulness of the experimenters:"
'Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: 'What would happen if we did such and such?' What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play.""
Prisoners were injected with diseases disguised as vaccinations to study their effects. For example, to analyze the results of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were also repeatedly subjected to rape by guards.
Vivisection
Thousands of people held in prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection (You all know what that is now. Organizations against animal experimentation generally use the phrase as a derogatory catch-all term for experiments on living animals, whereas practicing scientists seldom ever do. Live organ harvesting and other forms of human vivisection, as we also know, have been used as torture.), which was frequently done without anesthetic and was typically fatal. Okawa Fukumatsu, a former member of Unit 731, said in a video interview that he had vivisected a pregnant woman. Prisoners were infected with numerous illnesses before having their bodies vivisected. Invasive surgery was conducted on inmates to remove organs and learn how the condition affects the human body.
Inmates' limbs were severed so researchers could monitor blood loss. Sometimes the victims' corpses' severed limbs were reattached to their opposite sides. In addition, some convicts had surgical procedures to remove their stomachs and reconnect their esophagus to their intestines. Others had parts of their organs removed, including the brain, the liver, and the lungs. According to Imperial Japanese Army physician Ken Yuasa, at least 1,000 Japanese soldiers participated in vivisection on humans in mainland China, suggesting that the practice was commonly done outside Unit 731.
Biological warfare
Throughout World War II, Unit 731 and its related units—including Unit 1644 and Unit 100—were engaged in the study, production, and experimental use of epidemic-producing biowarfare weapons in attacks against the Chinese population (both military and civilian). For example, in 1940 and 1941, low-flying aircraft carried plague-carrying fleas over Chinese towns, notably coastal Ningbo and Changde, in the Hunan Province. These fleas were produced in the labs of Unit 731 and Unit 1644.
With bubonic plague epidemics, these flea bombs claimed tens of thousands of lives. During an expedition to Nanjing, typhoid and paratyphoid virus were dispersed into water supplies across the city's wells, marshes, and residences and infused into snacks served to inhabitants. Soon after, epidemics spread to the joy of many scientists, who concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the diseases.
At least 12 large-scale bioweapon field tests were conducted, and biological weapons were used to target 11 Chinese cities. According to reports, a 1941 raid on Changde resulted in some 10,000 biological injuries and 1,700 deaths among poorly equipped Japanese soldiers, most of which died of cholera. In addition, Japanese researchers conducted experiments on inmates suffering from cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, and other illnesses. The defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb, which were used to spread the bubonic plague, were developed as a result of this study. Ishii presented the concept of designing some of these bombs using porcelain shells in 1938.
These bombs allowed Japanese forces to launch biological strikes, infecting crops, water supplies, and other places with cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and other deadly illnesses via fleas. Researchers would study the victims dying during biological bomb trials while protected by protective suits. Aircraft would deliver contaminated food and clothes into parts of China that were not under Japanese control. Additionally, innocent people received candies and food that had been tainted.
On several targets, bombs containing plague fleas, contaminated clothes, and infected goods were dropped upon the unsuspecting citizens. As a result, at least 400,000 Chinese citizens were killed due to cholera, anthrax, and plague. Also tested on Chinese citizens was tularemia, Also known as rabbit fever or deer fly fever, which typically attacks the skin, eyes, lymph nodes, and lungs.
Chiang Kai-shek dispatched military and international medical specialists delegation to document the evidence and treat the sick in November 1941 in response to pressure from various stories of the biowarfare assaults. However, the Allied Powers did not respond to a report on the Japanese deployment of plague-infected fleas on Changde until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 denouncing the attacks. The announcement was made publicly available the following year.
Obviously, this is ridiculous and inhumane, but it couldn't be used on us here in the U.S. of "Don't Tread On Me" A, right?
Well, hold on to your stars and stripes because during the final months of World War II, codenamed "Cherry Blossoms at Night," Unit 731 planned to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier. So yep, if the United States had not dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there could have been a man-made plague set upon the west coast.
Weapons testing
Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and positions. Flamethrowers were also tested on people. Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, explosive bombs, and bayonets and knives.
To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese Soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped, unprotected, to wooden planks staked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. After that, it was surgery for most and autopsies for the rest.
This info was taken from the documentary — Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria
Other experiments
In other diplorable tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death. They would then be placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets. Next, victims were tested to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival. Next, they were hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans, placed into centrifuges, and spun until they died. People were also injected with animal blood, notably horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive.
The Unit also looked at the characteristics of several other poisons and chemical agents. Prisoners were subjected to substances like tetrodotoxin (the venom of pufferfish or fugu), heroin, Korean bindweed, bactal, and castor-oil seeds, to mention a few (ricin). In addition, according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu, large volumes of blood were removed from some detainees to research the consequences of blood loss. At least half a liter of blood was taken in one instance at intervals of two to three days.
The human body only contains 5 liters.
As we mentioned, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. These tests aimed to determine the amount of water in an individual's body and how long one could survive with little to no water intake. Victims were also starved before these tests began. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at periodic intervals.
"It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children who became marutas were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. At death, the corpses would only weigh ≈1/5 normal bodyweight."
— Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, (2019)
Unit 731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. For example, unit member Naeo Ikeda wrote:
In my experience, when 100 cc A type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later, their temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Sixty minutes later, their pulse was 106 per minute, and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. The temperature was 37.7 degrees two hours later, and the subject recovered three hours later. When 120 cc of AB-type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, an hour after the subject described malaise and psychroesthesia (feeling cold) in both legs. When 100 cc of A.B. type blood was transfused to a B-type subject, there seemed to be no side effects.
Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) pp. 38–39
Unit 731 tested a slew of chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. Some of the agents tested were mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, white phosphorus, adamsite, and phosgene gas. To put things in horrific perspective, the mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%. Still, those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had prolonged hospitalizations and, if they recovered, were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life. The toxic effects of lewisite are rapid onset and result from acute exposures. The vesicant properties of lewisite result from direct skin contact; it has been estimated that as little as 2 ml to an adult human (equivalent to 37.6 mg/kg) can be fatal within several hours. Airborne release of cyanide gas, in the form of hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride, would be expected to be lethal to 50% of those exposed (LCt50) at levels of 2,500-5,000 mg•min/m^3 and 11,000 mg•min/m^3, respectively. When ingested as sodium or potassium cyanide, the lethal dose is 100-200 mg. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, "[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed." The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of liver, kidneys, and heart damage. Adamsite (D.M.) is a vomiting compound used as a riot-control agent (military designation, D.M.). It is released as an aerosol. Adverse health effects from exposure to adamsite (D.M.) are generally self-limited and do not require specific therapy. Most adverse health effects resolve within 30 minutes. Exposure to large concentrations of adamsite (D.M.), or exposure to adamsite (D.M.) within an enclosed space or under adverse weather conditions, may result in more severe adverse health effects, serious illness, or death.
Phosgene is highly toxic by acute (short-term) inhalation exposure. Severe respiratory effects, including pulmonary edema, pulmonary emphysema, and death, have been reported in humans. Severe ocular irritation and dermal burns may result following eye or skin exposure. It is estimated that as many as 85% of the 91,000 gas deaths in WWI were a result of phosgene or the related agent, diphosgene
A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university):
"In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square [97 sq ft] and two meters [6.6 ft] high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was adamsite (sneezing gas), and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there."
Taken from— Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, p. 349 (2019)
Super gross.
Takeo Wano, a former medical employee of Unit 731, claimed to have observed a Western man being pickled in formaldehyde after being chopped in half vertically. Because so many Russians were residing in the neighborhood at the time, Wano suspected that the man was Russian.
Additionally, Unit 100 experimented with poisonous gas. The captives were housed in mobile gas chambers that resembled phone booths. Others donned military uniforms, while others were made to wear various sorts of gas masks, and other people wore nothing at all.
It's been said that some of the tests are "psychopathically cruel, with no possible military purpose." One experiment, for instance, measured how long it took for three-day-old newborns to freeze to death. Jesus christ.
Additionally, Unit 731 conducted field tests of chemical weapons on detainees. An unknown researcher at the Kamo Unit (Unit 731) wrote a paper that details a significant (mustard gas) experiment on humans from September 7–10, 1940. Twenty participants were split into three groups and put in observation gazebos, trenches, and fighting emplacements. One group received up to 1,800 field cannon rounds of mustard gas for 25 minutes while wearing Chinese underpants, without a cap or a mask. Another set had shoes and a summer military outfit; three wore masks, while the others did not.
They also were exposed to as many as 1,800 rounds of mustard gas. A third group was clothed in summer military uniform, three with masks and two without masks, and were exposed to as many as 4,800 rounds. Then their general symptoms and damage to the skin, eye, respiratory organs, and digestive organs were observed at 4 hours, 24 hours, and 2, 3, and 5 days after the shots.
Holy shit. Then the psychopaths injected the blister fluid from one subject into another, and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. Finally, five subjects were forced to drink a water solution of mustard and lewisite gas, with or without decontamination. The report describes the conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run. The following is an excerpt of one of these reports:
"Number 376, dugout of the first area:
September 7, 1940, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Looks with hollow eyes. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Eyelids edematous (uh-dim-uh-tose)(Swollen with fluid), swollen. Epiphora. (excessive watering), Hyperemic conjunctivae (ocular redness).
September 8, 1940, 6 am: Neck, breast, upper abdomen, and scrotum weeping, reddened, swollen. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. Had difficulties opening the eyes.
September 8, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Feels sick. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Mucous and bloody erosions across the shoulder girdle. Abundant mucus nose secretions. Abdominal pain. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. Proteinuria (excess protein in urinal, possibly meaning kidney damage).
September 9, 1940, 7 am: Tired and exhausted. Weakness of all four extremities.
Low morale. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Skin of the face still weeping.
Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) p. 187
Frostbite testing
Hisato Yoshimura, an Army engineer, carried out tests by forcing captives to stand outside, putting various limbs into water at multiple temperatures, and letting the limb freeze. Yoshimura would then use a small stick to whack the victims' frozen limbs while "producing a sound similar to that which a board emits when it is struck." The damaged region was then treated with different methods, such as dousing it in water or exposing it to the heat of a fire once the ice had been chipped away.
The sadistic fuck, Yoshimura, was described to the members of the Unit as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded animal" because of the strictness with which he would carry out his evil experiments. In an interview from the 1980s, Unit 731 member Naoji Uezono revealed a super uncool and nightmare-inducing incident when Yoshimura had "Researchers placed two nude males in an area that was 40–50 degrees below zero and documented the entire process until the individuals passed away. [The victims] were in such pain that they were tearing at each other's flesh with their nails ". In a 1950 essay for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology, Yoshimura revealed his lack of regret for torturing 20 kids and a three-day-old baby in tests that subjected them to ice water and ice temperatures below zero.
Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a "resistance index of frostbite" based on the mean temperature of 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion, and the time until the temperature rises after immersion. In several separate experiments, it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, and how the victim had been treated before the immersion. Variables like ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions concerning dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day, no salt).
Oh, science....
Then there's syphilis.
For those that may not know, syphilis is a chronic bacterial disease contracted chiefly by infection during sexual intercourse but also congenitally by infection of a developing fetus. The first sign of syphilis is a small, brownish dot on the infected person's left hand. How many of you looked? You dirty birds!
Actually, the first stage of syphilis involves a painless sore on the genitals, rectum, or mouth. After the initial sore heals, the second stage is characterized by a rash. Then, there are no symptoms until the final stage, which may occur years later. This final stage can result in damage to the brain, nerves, eyes, or heart.
Syphilis is treated with penicillin. Sexual partners should also be treated.
Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and noninfected prisoners to transmit syphilis, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows:
"Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot."
These unfortunate victims were infected and then vivisected at various stages of infection to view the interior and exterior organs as the disease developed. Despite being forcefully infected, many guards testified that the female victims were the viruses' hosts. Guards used the term "jam-filled buns" to refer to the syphilis-infected female detainees' genitalia.
And THAT is so gross on just about every level.
Inside the confines of Unit 731, several syphilis-infected children grew up. "One was a Chinese mother carrying a baby, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the final was a White Russian woman with a kid of around six or seven," recounted a Youth Corps member who was sent to train at Unit 731. Similar tests were performed on these women's offspring, focusing on how prolonged infection times influenced the success of therapies.
Just when you thought this shit was bad enough, the rape and forced pregnancies came.
For use in experiments, nonpregnant female convicts were made to get pregnant. The declared justification for the torture was the possible danger of infections, notably syphilis, being transmitted vertically (from mother to kid). In addition, their interests included maternal reproductive organ injury and fetal survival. There have been no reports of any Unit 731 survivors, including children, even though "a considerable number of newborns were born in captivity." Female captives' offspring are said to have either been aborted or murdered after birth.
While male prisoners were often used in single studies so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and as the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this violent and disturbing reality:
"One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work."
What in the actual fuck.
Prisoners and victims
An "International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare" was convened in Changde, China, the scene of the plague flea bombardment, as mentioned earlier, in 2002. There, it was calculated that around 580,000 people had been killed by the Imperial Japanese Army's germ warfare and other human experimentation. According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris, more than 200,000 people perished. In addition, 1,700 Japanese soldiers in Zhejiang during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi war were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to release the biological agent, showing major distribution problems in addition to the Chinese deaths. Additionally, according to Harris, animals infected with the plague were released close to the war's conclusion, leading to plague outbreaks that, between 1946 and 1948, killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin region.
Those chosen as test subjects included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, homeless people, and people with mental disabilities, including infants, men, elderly people, and pregnant women, in addition to those detained by the Kenpeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities." About 300 researchers worked at Unit 731, including medical professionals and bacteriologists. However, many people have become numb to carrying out harsh tests due to their experience with animal experimentation.
Without considering victims from other medical research facilities like Unit 100, at least 3,000 men, women, and children: 117—of which at least 600 each year were given by the Kenpeitai—were subjected to Unit 731 experimentation at the Pingfang camp alone. Although the literature generally accepts the number of 3,000 internal casualties, former Unit member Okawa Fukumatsu challenged it in a video interview. He claimed that the Unit had at least 10,000 internal experiments victims and that he had personally vivisected thousands of them.
- S. Wells said that Chinese people made up most of the casualties, with smaller proportions of Russian, Mongolian, and Korean people. A few European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war may have also been among them. According to a Yokusan Sonendan paramilitary political youth branch member who worked for Unit 731, Americans, British, and French were present, in addition to Chinese, Russians, and Koreans. According to Sheldon H. Harris' research, the victims were primarily political dissidents, communist sympathizers, common criminals, low-income residents, and those with mental disabilities. According to estimates by author Seiichi Morimura, about 70% of the Pingfang camp's fatalities (both military and civilian) were Chinese, while roughly 30% were Russian.
Nobody who went inside Unit 731 survived. Let me repeat that: "Nobody that went inside Unit 731 survived".
At night, prisoners were usually brought into Unit 731 in black cars with no windows but only a ventilation hole. One of the drivers would exit the vehicle at the main gates and head to the guardroom to report to the guard. The "Special Team" in the inner jail, which was led by Shiro Ishii's brother, would then get a call from that guard. The convicts would then be taken to the inner prisons via an underground tunnel excavated beneath the center building's exterior.
Building 8 was one of the jails housing men and women while building 7 held just women. Once inside the inner jail, technicians would take blood and feces samples from the inmates, assess their kidney function, and gather other physical information. Prisoners found healthy and suitable for research were given a three-digit number instead of their names, which they kept until they passed away. Every time a prisoner passed away following the tests they had undergone, a clerk from the 1st Division crossed their names off of an index card and took their shackles to be worn by newly arrived captives.
At least one "friendly" social interaction between inmates and Unit 731 employees has been documented. Two female convicts were engaged by technician Naokata Ishibashi. One prisoner was a Chinese woman, age 21, while the other was a Soviet woman, age 19. Ishibashi discovered that she was from Ukraine after asking where she was from. The two inmates urged Ishibashi to acquire a mirror since they claimed to have not seen their own faces since being taken prisoner. Through a gap in the cell door, Ishibashi managed to covertly get a mirror to them. As long as they were healthy enough, prisoners were regularly employed for experimentation. Once a prisoner had been admitted to the Unit, they had a two-month life expectancy on average. Many female convicts gave birth there, and some inmates remained alive in the unit for nearly a year. The jail cells each featured a squat toilet and wood floors. The prison's exterior walls and the cells' outer walls were separated by space, allowing the guards to pass behind the cells. There was a little window in each cell door. When shown the inner jail, Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters, Tamura Tadashi, stated that he glanced inside the cells and observed live individuals in chains, some of whom moved around, while others lay on the bare floor and were in a very ill and helpless condition.
Yoshio Shinozuka, a former Unit 731 Youth Corps member, testified that it was difficult to look through these prison doors because of their tiny windows. Cast iron doors and a high level of security made up the inner jail. No one was allowed admission without specific authorization, a picture I.D. pass, and the entry/exit timings were recorded. These two inner-prison structures were the "special team's" workspaces. This group wore white overalls, army caps, rubber boots, and carried guns.
A former member of the Special Team (who insisted on anonymity) recalled in 1995 his first vivisection conducted at the Unit:
"He didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."
— Anonymous, The New York Times (March 17 1995)
According to some reports, it was standard procedure at the Unit for doctors to place a piece of cloth (or a portion of medical gauze) inside a prisoner's lips before starting vivisection to muffle any screams.
Even though the jail was pretty secure, there was at least one effort to break out... That failed.
According to Corporal Kikuchi Norimitsu's testimony, a fellow unit member informed him that a prisoner had been taken "jumped out of the cell and ran down the corridor, grabbed the keys, and opened the iron doors and some of the cells" after "having shown violence and had struck the experimenter with a door handle." Only the bravest of the inmates were able to jump free, though. These brave ones were killed ". Seiichi Morimura goes into further depth about this attempt at escapology in his book The Devil's Feast.
Two male Russian prisoners were being held in handcuffs in a cell. One of them was lying flat on the ground and acting like he was sick. One of the staff members noticed and decided to go inside the cell. The Russian on the ground, suddenly sprang up and overpowered the guard. The two Russians yelled, unlocked their shackles, grabbed the keys, and opened a few more cells. Other Russian and Chinese prisoners were freaking out, up and down the halls while shouting and screaming. Finally, one Russian yelled at the members of Unit 731, pleading with them to shoot him rather than use him as a test subject.
This Russian was gunned down and murdered. One employee who saw the attempted escape remembered what happened: "In comparison to the "marutas," who had both freedom and weapons, we were all spiritually lost. We knew in our hearts at the moment that justice was not on our side ". Even if the prisoners had been able to leave the quadrangle, a vigorously defended facility staffed with guards, they would have had to traverse a dry moat lined with electric wire and a three-meter-high brick wall to get to the complex's outside.
Even members of Unit 731 weren't free from being subjects of experiments. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sudō, an employee of the first Division at Unit 731, became infected with bubonic plague due to the production of plague bacteria. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sudō. About this Tamura said:
"Sudō had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest were bleeding. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. I sanitised his whole body with disinfectant. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. After Sudō's body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sudō's stomach skin and sliced downward. Sudō shouted "brute!" and died with this last word."
Taken from— Criminal History of Unit 731 of the Japanese Military, pp. 118–119 (1991)
Additionally, Unit 731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that his friend, junior assistant Mitsuo Hirakawa, was vivisected due to being accidentally infected with the plague.
Surrender and immunity
Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but he was repeatedly told to fuck off.
With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon its work in a hurry. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. Potential witnesses, such as the 300 remaining prisoners, were either gassed or fed poison while the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were all frigging shot. Ishii ordered every group member to disappear and "take the secret to the grave." Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in case the remaining personnel was captured.
Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the war's final days to destroy any evidence of their activities. Still, many were sturdy enough to remain somewhat intact.
Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, whose name doesn't really sound Japanese and who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September 1945. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's military center for biological weapons. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity, and B.O.Y. was there a shit ton!
At the time of his arrival in Japan, he had no knowledge of what Unit 731 was. Until he finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about their biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so the morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare. Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. As a result, MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants: he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. Yessiree, bob! You heard that correctly!
American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including going through and messing with their mail. The Americans believed the research data was valuable and didn't want other nations, especially those guys with the sickle, you know... the Soviet Union, to get their red hands on the data for biological weapons.
The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The Japanese defense counsel argued that the claim was vague and uncorroborated, and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence! The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit 731's activities and allegedly a fucking idiot. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been "accidental."
While German physicians were brought to trial and had their crimes publicized, the U.S. concealed information about Japanese biological warfare experiments and secured immunity for the monsters. I mean perpetrators.
Critics argue that racism led to the double standard in the American postwar responses to the experiments conducted on different nationalities. For example, whereas the perpetrators of Unit 731 were exempt from prosecution, the U.S. held a tribunal in Yokohama in 1948 that indicted nine Japanese physician professors and medical students for conducting vivisection upon captured American pilots; two professors were sentenced to death and others to 15–20 years' imprisonment. So, it's one thing to do it to THOUSANDS OF CHINESE AND RUSSIANS, but HOW DARE you do that to one of us! The fuck?
Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted 12 top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing and Unit 100 in Changchun in the Khabarovsk war crimes trials. Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otozō Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.
The trial of the Japanese monsters was held in Khabarovsk in December 1949; a lengthy partial transcript of trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by the Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp. The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda. The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient by Soviet standards. All but two of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with one prisoner dying in prison and the other committing suicide inside his cell). In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the U.S. also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the U.S. had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. The accusations of both the U.S. and the USSR were true. It is believed that the Japanese had also given information to the Soviets regarding their biological experimentation for judicial leniency. This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit 731 in Manchuria.
Official silence during the American occupation of Japan
As we, unfortunately, mentioned earlier, during the United States occupation of Japan, the members of Unit 731 and the members of other experimental units were set free. However, on May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington to inform it that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'war crimes' evidence."
One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. While working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences, he completed his experiments. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and infected mentally-ill patients with typhus. As the unit's chief, Shiro Ishii was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by the American occupation authorities because he had provided human experimentation research materials to them. However, from 1948 to 1958, less than five percent of the documents were transferred onto microfilm and stored in the U.S. National Archives before they were shipped back to Japan.
Post-occupation Japanese media coverage and debate
Japanese discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s after the American occupation of Japan ended. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit 731. Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa were actually carried out by members of Unit 731. In 1958, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō published The Sea and Poison about human experimentation in Fukuoka, which is thought to have been based on an actual incident.
The author Seiichi Morimura published The Devil's Gluttony in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit 731 but falsely attributed unrelated photos to the Unit, which raised questions about their accuracy.
Also, in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. Since then, much more in-depth testimony has been given in Japan. For example, the 2001 documentary Japanese Devils primarily consists of interviews with fourteen Unit 731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released.
Significance in postwar research on bio-warfare and medicine
Japanese Biological Warfare operations were by far the largest during WWII, and "possibly with more people and resources than the B.W. producing nations of France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union combined, between the world wars. Although the dissemination methods of delivering plague-infected fleas by aircraft were crude, the method, among others, allowed the Japanese to "conduct the most extensive employment of biological weapons during WWII." However, the amount of effort devoted to B.W. was not matched by its results. Ultimately, inadequate scientific and engineering foundations limited the effectiveness of the Japanese program. Harris speculates that U.S. scientists generally wanted to acquire it due to the concept of forbidden fruit, believing that lawful and ethical prohibitions could affect the outcomes of their research.
Unit 731 presents a particular problem since, unlike Nazi human experimentation, which the United States publicly condemned, the activities of Unit 731 are known to the general public only from the testimonies of willing former unit members.
Japanese history textbooks usually reference Unit 731 but do not detail allegations following there strict principles. However, Saburō Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description based on officers' testimony. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools because the testimony was insufficient. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation of freedom of speech.
In 1997, international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit 731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the court's ruling was that reparations are determined by international treaties, not national courts.
In August 2002, the Tokyo district court ruled that Japan had engaged in biological warfare for the first time. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. However, he rejected victims' compensation claims because they had already been settled by international peace treaties.
In October 2003, a Japan's House of Representatives member filed an inquiry. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit 731 but recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records located in the future. As a result, in April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731 in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.
After World War II, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who were banned from entering the United States. While they have added over 60,000 names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the D.O.J. and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of O.S.I., stated that this was due to two factors:
While most documents captured by the U.S. in Europe were microfilmed before being returned to their respective governments, the Department of Defense decided to not microfilm its vast collection of records before returning them to the Japanese government.
The Japanese government has also failed to grant the O.S.I. meaningful access to these and related records after the war. In contrast, European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative, the cumulative effect of which is that information on identifying these individuals is, in effect, impossible to recover.
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Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
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Do you happen to swear? Is it something you happen to do when you stub your pinky toe on the coffee table? What about when you've just finished dinner and you pull that glorious lasagna out of the oven, burn yourself and then drop your Italian masterpiece on the floor, in turn burning yourself once again? Odds are that if you’re listening to this show, you have a rather colorful vernacular and aren’t offended by those that share in your “darker” linguistic abilities. Those dramatic and often harsh, yet exceedingly hilarious words, have a pretty amazing history. Were they written in manuscripts by monks? Or, did we find them used by regular people and found in prose like the names of places, personal names, and animal names? Well, could they tell us more about our medieval past other than just that sex, torture, plagues and incest was all the rage? Let’s find out!
Fuck
Let’s start with our favorite word. Let’s all say it together, kids. “Fuck!” This most versatile yet often considered one of the worst of the “bad words” doesn’t seem to have been around in the English language prior to the fifteenth century and may have arrived later from the German or th Dutch. Leave it to those beautiful Germans to introduce us to such a colorful word. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary says it wasn’t actually used until 1500. However, the name of a specific place may have been used even earlier.
Many early instances of fuck were said to actually have been used to mean “to strike” rather than being anything to do with fornicating. The more common Middle English word for sex was ”swive”, which has developed into the Modern English word swivel, as in: go swivel on it. Some of the earliest instances of fuck, seen to mean “hitting” or “striking,” such as Simon Fuckebotere (from in 1290), who was more than likely in the milk industry, hitting butter, or Henry Fuckebeggar (1286/7) who may have, hit the poor.
The earliest examples of the word fuck in the English language appeared in the names of places. The first of these is said to be found near Sherwood in 1287: Ric Wyndfuk and Ric Wyndfuck de Wodehous. These both feature a kestrel known as the Windfucker which, we must assume, went in the wind. The next definite example comes from Bristol 1373 in Fockynggroue, which may have been named for a grove where couples went for “some quiet alone time.”
However, Somewhere among the indictment rolls of the county court of Chester (1310/11), studied by Dr. Paul Booth of Keele University (Staffordshire), a man whose Christian name was Roger is mentioned three times. His less Christian last name is also recorded. The name being mentioned repetitively pretty much means it did not result from a spelling mistake but rather it’s the real thing. Meaning, the man’s full name was Roger Fuckebythenavele. Not only does his second name move back the earliest use of fuck in its modern sense by quite a few decades; it also verifies that it is, in fact, a Middle English word. But of course, there are those fuckers that will undoubtedly debate it’s fucking origin.
The stem *fukkō-, with its characteristic double consonant, is easy to explain as a Germanic iterative verb – one of a large family of similar forms. They originated as combinations of various Indo-European roots with *-nah₂-, a suffix indicating repeated action. The formation is not, strictly speaking, Proto-Indo-European; the suffix owes its existence to the reanalysis of an older morphological structure (reanalysis happens when people fail to analyze an inherited structure in the same way as their predecessors). Still, verbs of this kind are older than Proto-Germanic.
*fukkō- apparently meant to ‘strike repeatedly, beat’ (like, say, “dashing” the cream with a plunger in a traditional butter churn). Note also windfucker and fuckwind – old, obsolete words for ‘kestrel’.
A number of words in other Germanic languages may also be related to fuck. One of them is Old Icelandic fjúka ‘to be tossed or driven by the wind’ < *feuka-; cf. also fjúk ‘drifting snowstorm’ (or, as one might put it in present-day English, a fucking blizzard). These words fit a recurrent morphological pattern observed by Kroonen (2012): Germanic iteratives with a voiceless geminate produced by Kluge’s Law often give rise to “de-iterativised” verbs in which the double stop is simplified if the full vocalism or the root (here, *eu rather than *u) is restored.
Kluge's law had a noticeable effect on Proto-Germanic morphology. Because of its dependence on ablaut and accent, it operated in some parts of declension and conjugation, but not in others, giving rise to alternations of short and long consonants in both nominal and verbal paradigms.
If the verb is really native (“Anglo-Saxon”), one would expect Old English *fuccian (3sg. *fuccaþ, pl. *fucciaþ, 1/3sg. preterite *fuccode, etc.). If these forms already had “impolite” connotations in Old English, their absence from the Old English literary corpus is understandable. We may be absolutely sure that *feortan (1/3 sg. pret. *feart, pret. pl. *furton, p.p. *forten) existed in Old English, since fart exists today (attested since about 1300, just like the word fuck) and has an impeccable Indo-European etymology, with cognates in several branches. Still, not a single one of these reconstructed Old English verb forms is actually documented (all we have is the scantily attested verbal noun feorting ‘fart(ing)’).
One has to remember that written records give us a strongly distorted picture of how people really spoke in the past. If you look at the frequency of fuck, fucking and fucker in written English over the last 200 years, you may get the impression that these words disappeared from English completely ca. 1820 and magically reappeared 140 years later. Even the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary pretended they didn’t exist. The volume that should have contained FUCK was published in 1900, and Queen Victoria was still alive.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Forms:
α. 1500s fucke, 1500s– fuck; also Scottish pre-1700 fuk.
Frequency (in current use): Show frequency band information
Origin: Probably a word inherited from Germanic.
Etymology: Probably cognate with Dutch fokken …
In coarse slang.
- In these senses typically, esp. in early use, with a man as the subject of the verb.
Thesaurus »
Categories »
- intransitive. To have sexual intercourse.
▸ ?a1513 W. Dunbar Poems (1998) I. 106 Be his feirris he wald haue fukkit.
- transitive. To have sexual intercourse with (a person).
In quot. a1500 in Latin-English macaronic verse; the last four words are enciphered by replacing each letter with the following letter of the alphabet, and fuccant has a Latin third-person plural ending. The passage translates as ‘They [sc. monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely.’
[a1500 Flen, Flyys (Harl. 3362) f. 47, in T. Wright & J. O. Halliwell Reliquiæ Antiquæ (1841) I. 91 Non sunt in cœli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk [= fuccant uuiuys of heli].]
- transitive. With an orifice, part of the body, or something inanimate as an object. Also occasionally intransitive with prepositional objects of this type.
[1680 School of Venus ii. 99 An hour after, he Ferked my Arse again in the same manner.]
- transitive. To damage, ruin, spoil, botch; to destroy, put an end to; = to fuck up 1a at Phrasal verbs 1. Also (chiefly in passive): to put into a difficult or hopeless situation; to ‘do for’.
Cf. also mind-fuck v.
1776 Frisky Songster (new ed.) 36 O, says the breeches, I shall be duck'd, Aye, says the petticoat, I shall be f—d.
- transitive. U.S. To cheat; to deceive, betray. Frequently without.
1866 G. Washington Affidavit 20 Oct. in I. Berlin et al. Black Mil. Experience in Civil War (1982) v. xviii. 792 Mr. Baker replied that deponent would be fucked out of his money by Mr. Brown.
- transitive. In oaths and imprecations (chiefly in optative with no subject expressed): expressing annoyance, hatred, dismissal, etc. Cf. damn v. 6, bugger v. 2a. See also fuck it at Phrases 2, fuck you at Phrases 1b.
1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. xv. [Circe] 560 God fuck old Bennett!
Phrases
Imprecatory and exclamatory phrases (typically in imperative or optative with no subject expressed sense).
P1. Expressing hostility, contempt, or defiant indifference.
Categories »
- go fuck yourself and variants.
1895 Rep. Senate Comm. Police Dept. N.Y. III. 3158 By Senator Bradley: Q. Repeat what he said to you? A. He said, ‘Go on, fuck yourself, you son-of-a-bitch; I will give you a hundred dollars’; he tried to punch me, and I went out.
- fuck you.
1905 L. Schindler Testimony 20 Dec. in People State of N.Y. Respondent, against Charles McKenna (1907) (N.Y. Supreme Court) 37 Murray said to me, ‘Fuck you, I will give you more the same.’ And as he said that, I grabbed the two of them.
P2. fuck it: expressing dismissal, exasperation, resignation, or impetuousness.
1922 E. E. Cummings Enormous Room iv. 64 I said, ‘F— it, I don't want it.’
P3. fuck me and elaborated variants: expressing astonishment or exasperation.
1929 F. Manning Middle Parts of Fortune II. xi. 229 ‘Well, you can fuck me!’ exclaimed the astonished Martlow.
Cunt
Cunt is a vulgar word for the vulva or vagina. It is used in a variety of ways, including as a term of disparagement. Reflecting national variations, cunt can be used as a disparaging and obscene term for a woman in the United States, an unpleasant or stupid man or woman in the United Kingdom, or a contemptible man in Australia and New Zealand. However, in Australia and New Zealand it can also be a neutral or positive term when used with a positive qualifier (e.g., "He's a good cunt"). The term has various derivative senses, including adjective and verb uses.
Feminist writer and English professor Germaine Greer argues that cunt "is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock".
The earliest known use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was as part of a placename of a London street, Gropecunt Lane. Use of the word as a term of abuse is relatively recent, dating from the late nineteenth century. The word appears not to have been taboo in the Middle Ages, but became that way toward the end of the eighteenth century, and was then not generally not allowed to be printed until the latter part of the twentieth century.
There is some disagreement on the origin of the term cunt, although most sources agree that it came from the Germanic word (Proto-Germanic *kunto, stem *kunton-), which emerged as kunta in Old Norse. The Proto-Germanic form's actual origin is a matter of debate among scholars. Most Germanic languages have cognates, including Swedish, Faroese, and Nynorsk (kunta), West Frisian, and Middle Low German (kunte), Middle Dutch (conte), Dutch kut (cunt), and Dutch kont (butt), Middle Low German kutte, Middle High German kotze ("prostitute"), German kott, and maybe Old English cot. The Proto-Germanic term's etymology ia questionable.
It may have arisen by Grimm's law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root *gen/gon "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root guneh or "woman" (Greek: gunê, seen in gynaecology). Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus ("vulva"), and its derivatives French con, Spanish coño, and Portuguese cona, or in Persian kos (کُس), have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus are cuneus ("wedge") and its derivative cunēre ("to fasten with a wedge", (figurative) "to squeeze in"), leading to English words such as cuneiform ("wedge-shaped"). In Middle English, cunt appeared with many spellings, such as coynte, cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word.
The word, in its modern meaning, is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng, a manuscript from some time before 1325, includes the advice:
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.) from wikipedia.
The word cunt is generally regarded in English-speaking countries as unsuitable for normal publicconversations. It has been described as "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words".
Quoted from wikipedia:
Some American feminists of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt". In the context of pornography, Catharine MacKinnon argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts; and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin described the word as reducing women to "the one essential – 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".
While “vagina” is used much more commonly in colloquial speech to refer to the genitals of people with vulvas than “cunt” is, its origins are defined by its service to male sexuality, making “cunt” — interestingly enough — the least historically misogynistic of the two. “Cunt” has also been used in Renaissance bawdy verse and in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but it was not until Shakespeare’s era that its meaning began to fundamentally shift, during the dawn of Christian doctrine.
Arguably, if cunt simply means and refers to “vagina”, then why would that be bad? Vaginas are pretty great! They provide people with pleasure, they give life, and they’re even a naturally developed lunar calendar! So, why would a person refer to another, assumedly pissy person as a vagina?
So, should we as society fight the negative stereotypes and embrace the term cunt again? It’s a tiny word that bears a lot of weight, but it should be anything but scary or offensive. It can be a massive dose of love instead of an enormous force of hate if we actively define our vocabulary rather than letting it define us.
Words only have that type of power when the uptight, vanilla flavored, missionary only Karen’s and Kevin’s of the world decide they don’t like them. This has been going on for as long as we’ve been using words. So, let’s take it back.
We love you, ya cunts!
coarse slang in later use.
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- The female genitals; the vulva or vagina. Cf. quaint n.1
a1400 tr. Lanfranc Sci. Cirurgie (Ashm.) (1894) 172 In wymmen þe necke of þe bladdre is schort, & is maad fast to the cunte.
1552 D. Lindsay Satyre Procl. 144 First lat me lok thy cunt, Syne lat me keip the key.
1680 Earl of Rochester et al. Poems 77 I fear you have with interest repaid, Those eager thrusts, which at your Cunt he made.
1865 ‘Philocomus’ Love Feast iii. 21 I faint! I die! I spend! My cunt is sick! Suck me and fuck me!
- A woman as a source of sexual gratification; a promiscuous woman; a slut. Also as a general term of abuse for a woman.
1663 S. Pepys Diary 1 July (1971) IV. 209 Mr. Batten..acting all the postures of lust and buggery that could be imagined, and..saying that the he hath to sell such a pouder as should make all the cunts in town run after him.
As a term of abuse for a man.
1860 in M. E. Neely Abraham Lincoln Encycl. (1982) 154 And when they got to Charleston, they had to, as is wont Look around to find a chairman, and so they took a Cunt
A despised, unpleasant, or annoying place, thing, or task.
1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. iv. [Calypso] 59 The grey sunken cunt of the world.
Bitch
Women were frequently equated to dogs in Ancient Greek literature, which was used to dehumanize and shame them for their alleged lack of restraint and sexual urges. This is believed to have originated from the hunter goddess Artemis, who was frequently depicted as a pack of hounds and was perceived to be both beautiful and frigid and savage. According to popular belief, the term "bitch" as we use it today evolved from the Old English word "bicce," which meant a female dog, about the year 1000 AD. The phrase started out as a critique of a woman's sexuality in the 15th century but eventually evolved to signify that the lady was rude or disagreeable.
Clare Bayley has connected this growth of the term "bitch" as an insult to the suffrage struggle and the final passage of women's suffrage in the early 20th century, particularly the 1920s. Men were intimidated when women started to challenge their subordinate roles in the patriarchal power structure, and the phrase started to be used to ferocious and irate females. Men's respect for women and the prevalence of the term are clearly correlated, since usage of the term rapidly decreased during World War II as men's appreciation of women's contributions to the war effort increased.
However, as they competed with women for employment after the war ended and the men went back to work, the word's usage increased once more. As the housewife paradigm started to fade away during the war, the position of women in the workplace and society as a whole underwent an irreparable change. However, males perceived the presence of women in the workforce as a challenge to their supremacy in society.
With songs like Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" ascending the charts in 1974, the slur became more common in mainstream culture and music in the latter decades of the 20th century. As a result of artists like Kanye West and Eminem using the term "bitch" to denigrate women and depict violence against them in their lyrics, hip-hop culture has also long been accused of being misogynistic.
We just need to look at Hillary Clinton's recent campaign for president in 2016 to understand how frequently this slur is leveled at women, especially those in positions of authority who are defying patriarchal expectations and shattering glass ceilings. Rep. AOC being called a "fucking bitch" by a GOP Rep. is another similar example. It is evident that the usage of the phrase and the degree to which males regard women to be a danger are related.
bitch (v.)
"to complain," attested from at least 1930, perhaps from the sense in bitchy, perhaps influenced by the verb meaning "to bungle, spoil," which is recorded from 1823. But bitched in this sense seems to echo Middle English bicched "cursed, bad," a general term of opprobrium (as in Chaucer's bicched bones "unlucky dice"), which despite the hesitation of OED, seems to be a derivative of bitch (n.).
bitchy (adj.)
1925, U.S. slang, "sexually provocative;" later (1930s) "spiteful, catty, bad-tempered" (usually of females); from bitch + -y (2). Earlier in reference to male dogs thought to look less rough or coarse than usual.
The earliest use of "bitch" specifically as a derogatory term for women dates to the fifteenth century. Its earliest slang meaning mainly referred to sexual behavior, according to the English language historian Geoffrey Hughes:
The early applications were to a promiscuous or sensual woman, a metaphorical extension of the behavior of a bitch in heat. Herein lies the original point of the powerful insult son of a bitch, found as biche sone ca. 1330 in Arthur and Merlin ... while in a spirited exchange in the Chester Play (ca. 1400) a character demands: "Whom callest thou queine, skabde bitch?" ("Who are you calling a whore, you miserable bitch?").
In modern usage, the slang term bitch has different meanings depending largely on social context and may vary from very offensive to endearing, and as with many slang terms, its meaning and nuances can vary depending on the region in which it is used.
The term bitch can refer to a person or thing that is very difficult, as in "Life's a bitch" or "He sure got the bitch end of that deal". It is common for insults to lose intensity as their meaning broadens ("bastard" is another example). In the film The Women (1939), Joan Crawford could only allude to the word: "And by the way, there's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society - outside of a kennel." At the time, use of the actual word would have been censored by the Hays Office. By 1974, Elton John had a hit single (#4 in the U.S. and #14 in the U.K.) with "The Bitch Is Back", in which he says "bitch" repeatedly. It was, however, censored by some radio stations. On late night U.S. television, the character Emily Litella (1976-1978) on Saturday Night Live (portrayed by Gilda Radner) would frequently refer to Jane Curtin under her breath at the end of their Weekend Update routine in this way: "Oh! Never mind...! Bitch!"
Bitchin' arose in the 1950s to describe something found to be cool or rad.
Modern use can include self-description, often as an unfairly difficult person. For example, in the New York Times bestseller The Bitch in the House, a woman describes her marriage: "I'm fine all day at work, but as soon as I get home, I'm a horror....I'm the bitch in the house."Boy George admitted "I was being a bitch" in a falling out with Elton John.
Generally, the term bitch is still considered offensive, and not accepted in formal situations. According to linguist Deborah Tannen, "Bitch is the most contemptible thing you can say about a woman. Save perhaps the four-letter C word." It's common for the word to be censored on Prime time TV, often rendered as "the b-word". During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a John McCain supporter referred to Hillary Clinton by asking, "How do we beat the bitch?" The event was reported in censored format:
On CNN's "The Situation Room," Washington Post media critic and CNN "Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz observed that "Senator McCain did not embrace the 'b' word that this woman in the audience used." ABC reporter Kate Snow adopted the same location. On CNN's "Out in the Open," Rick Sanchez characterized the word without using it by saying, "Last night, we showed you a clip of one of his supporters calling Hillary Clinton the b-word that rhymes with witch." A local Fox 25 news reporter made the same move when he rhymed the unspoken word with rich.
A study reported that, when used on social media, bitch "aims to promote traditional, cultural beliefs about femininity". Used hundreds of thousands of times per day on such platforms, it is associated with sexist harassment, "victimizing targets", and "shaming" victims who do not abide by degrading notions about femininity
Son of a bitch
The first known appearance of "son-of-a-bitch" in a work of American fiction is Seventy-Six (1823), a historical fiction novel set during the American Revolutionary War by eccentric writer and critic John Neal. The protagonist, Jonathan Oadley, recounts a battle scene in which he is mounted on a horse: "I wheeled, made a dead set at the son-of-a-bitch in my rear, unhorsed him, and actually broke through the line."
The term's use as an insult is as old as that of bitch. Euphemistic terms are often substituted, such as gun in the phrase "son of a gun" as opposed to "son of a bitch", or "s.o.b." for the same phrase. Like bitch, the severity of the insult has diminished. Roy Blount Jr. in 2008 extolled the virtues of "son of a bitch" (particularly in comparison to "asshole") in common speech and deed. Son of a bitch can also be used as a "how about that" reaction, or as a reaction to excruciating pain.
In politics the phrase "Yes, he is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch" has been attributed, probably apocryphally, to various U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. Immediately after the detonation of the first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945 (the device codenamed Gadget), the Manhattan Project scientist who served as the director of the test, Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge, exclaimed to Robert Oppenheimer "Now we're all sons-of-bitches."
In January 2022, United States President Joe Biden was recorded on a hot mic responding to Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asking, "Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterms?" Biden responded sarcastically, saying, "It's a great asset — more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch."
The 19th-century British racehorse Filho da Puta took its name from "Son of a Bitch" in Portuguese.
The Curtiss SB2C, a World War 2 U.S. Navy dive bomber, was called "Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class" by some of its pilots and crewmen.
In American popular culture, the slang word "basic" is used to derogatorily refer to persons who are thought to favor mainstream goods, fashions, and music. Hip-hop culture gave rise to "basic bitch," which gained popularity through rap music, lyrics, blogs, and videos from 2011 to 2014. "Bros" is a common word for their male counterparts. Other English-speaking nations have terms like "basic bitch" or "airhead," such as modern British "Essex girls" and "Sloane Rangers," as well as Australian "haul girls," who are noted for their love of shopping for expensive clothing and uploading films of their purchases on YouTube.
Oxford English Dictionary
- transitive. To call (a person, esp. a woman) a bitch.
1707 Diverting Muse 131 Why how now, crys Venus, altho you're my Spouse, [If] you Bitch me, you Brute, have a care of your Brows
- transitive. To behave like a bitch towards (a person); to be spiteful, malicious, or unfair to (a person); to let (a person) down.
1764 D. Garrick Let. 23 Aug. (1963) II. 423 I am a little at a loss what You will do for a Woman Tragedian to stare & tremble wth yr Heroes, if Yates should bitch You—but she must come.
- intransitive. To engage in spiteful or malicious criticism or gossip, esp. about another person; to talk spitefully or cattily about.
1915 G. Cannan Young Earnest i. x. 92 It's the women bitching at you got into your blood.
intransitive. Originally U.S. To grumble, to complain (about something, or at someone).
Frequently collocated with moan.
1930 Amer. Speech 5 238 [Colgate University slang] He bitched about the course.
†3. intransitive. To back down, to yield. Obsolete. rare.
1777 E. Burke Let. 9 May in Corr. (1961) III. 339 Norton bitched a little at last, but though he would recede; Fox stuck to his motion.
Shit
shit (v.)
Old English scitan, from Proto-Germanic *skit- (source also of North Frisian skitj, Dutch schijten, German scheissen), from PIE(proto indo-european) root *skei- "to cut, split." The notion is of "separation" from the body (compare Latin excrementum, from excernere "to separate," Old English scearn "dung, muck," from scieran "to cut, shear;" see sharn). It is thus a cousin to science and conscience.
"Shit" is not an acronym. Nor is it a recent word. But it was taboo from 1600 and rarely appeared in print (neither Shakespeare nor the KJV has it), and even in the "vulgar" publications of the late 18c. it is disguised by dashes. It drew the wrath of censors as late as 1922 ("Ulysses" and "The Enormous Room"), scandalized magazine subscribers in 1957 (a Hemingway story in Atlantic Monthly) and was omitted from some dictionaries as recently as 1970 ("Webster's New World"). [Rawson]
It has extensive slang usage; the meaning "to lie, to tease'' is from 1934; that of "to disrespect" is from 1903. Also see shite. Shat is a humorous past tense form, not etymological, first recorded 18th century.
To shit bricks "be very frightened" attested by 1961. The connection between fear and involuntary defecation has generated expressions in English since the 14th century. (the image also is in Latin), and probably also is behind scared shitless (1936).
shit (n.)
Middle English shit "diarrhea," from Old English scitte "purging, diarrhea," from source of shit (v.). The general sense of "excrement" dates from 1580s (Old English had scytel, Middle English shitel for "dung, excrement;" the usual 14c. noun for natural discharges of the bodies of men or beasts seems to have been turd or filth). As an exclamation attested in print by 1920 but certainly older. Use for "obnoxious person" is by 1508; meaning "misfortune, trouble" is attested from 1937.
Shit-faced "drunk" is 1960s student slang; shit list is from 1942. Shit-hole is by 1937 as "rectum," by 1969 in reference to undesirable locations. Shitload (also shit-load) for "a great many" is by 1970. Shitticism is Robert Frost's word for scatological writing.
Up shit creek "in trouble" is by 1868 in a South Carolina context (compare the metaphoric salt river, of which it is perhaps a coarse variant). Slang not give a shit "not care" is by 1922. Pessimistic expression same shit different day is attested by 1989. To get (one's) shit together "manage one's affairs" is by 1969. Emphatic shit out of luck is by 1942.
The expression when the shit hits the fan "alluding to a moment of crisis or its disastrous consequences" is attested by 1967.
Expressing anger, despair, surprise, frustration, resignation, excitement, etc.
1865 Proc. Court Martial U.S. Army (Judge Advocate General's Office) U.S. National Arch.: Rec. group 153, File MM-2412 3 Charge II. Private James Sullivan...did in contemptuous and disrespectful manner reply..‘Oh, shit, I can't’ or words to that effect.
Ass/Asshole
The word arse in English derives from the Proto-Germanic (reconstructed) word *arsaz, from the Proto-Indo-European word *ors-, meaning "buttocks" or "backside". The combined form arsehole is first attested from 1500 in its literal use to refer to the anus. The metaphorical use of the word to refer to the worst place in a region (e.g., "the arsehole of the world"), is first attested in print in 1865; the use to refer to a contemptible person is first attested in 1933. In the ninth chapter of his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright quotes a snippet of verse that uses the term: "All these white folks dressed so fine / Their ass-holes smell just like mine ...". Its earliest known usage in newspapers as an insult was 1965. As with other vulgarities, these uses of the word may have been common in oral speech for some time before their first appearances in print. By the 1970s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the Month." In 1972, Jonathan Richman of Modern Lovers recorded his song "Pablo Picasso", which includes the line "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole."
Until the early 1990s, the word was considered one of a number of words that could not be uttered on commercial television in the United States. Comedian Andrew Dice Clay caused a major shock when he uttered the word during a televised MTV awards show in 1989. However, there were PG-13 and R-rated films in the 1980s that featured use of the word, such as the R-rated The Terminator (1984), the PG-13-rated National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), and the PG-rated Back to the Future (1985). By 1994, however, vulgarity had become more acceptable, and the word was featured in dialog on the long-running television series NYPD Blue, though it has yet to become anything close to commonplace on network TV. In some broadcast edits (such as the syndication airings of South Park), the word is partially bleeped out, as "assh—". A variant of the term, "ass clown", was coined and popularized by the 1999 comedy film Office Space.
The word is mainly used as a vulgarity, generally to describe people who are viewed as stupid, incompetent, unpleasant, or detestable. Moral philosopher Aaron James, in his 2012 book, Assholes: A Theory, gives a more precise meaning of the word, particularly to its connotation in the United States: A person, who is almost always male, who considers himself of much greater moral or social importance than everyone else; who allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically; who does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and who is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people. He feels he is not to be questioned, and he is the one who is chiefly wronged.
Many would believe the term ass to be used to describe an ungulate or a hoofed mammal of the smaller variety. Those people would be correct. However ass would be used as slang to describe the incompetence of people as they seem to resemble that of a donkey. Slow and stupid. We don't see donkeys in this manner but the people of old may have.
A stupid, irritating, or contemptible person; a person who behaves despicably. Cf. arsehole n. 3, shithole n. 2.
Quot. 1954, from a story originally told in 1933, provides evidence for the development of this sense from figurative uses of sense 1.
[1954 V. Randolph Pissing in Snow (1976) lxx. 106 When God got the job [of making men and women] done,..there was a big pile of ass-holes left over. It looks to me like the Almighty just throwed all them ass-holes together, and made the Easton family.]
Dick/dickhead
Dick is a common English language slang word for the human penis. It is also used by extension for a variety of slang purposes, generally considered vulgar, including: as a verb to describe sexual activity; and as a term for individuals who are considered to be rude, abrasive, inconsiderate, or otherwise contemptible. In this context, it can be used interchangeably with jerk, and can also be used as a verb to describe rude or deceitful actions. Variants include dickhead, which literally refers to the glans. The offensiveness of the word dick is complicated by the continued use of the word in inoffensive contexts, including as both a given name (often a nickname for Richard) and a surname, the popular British dessert spotted dick, the classic novel Moby-Dick, the Dick and Jane series of children's books, and the American retailer Dick's Sporting Goods. Uses like these have given comic writers a foundation to use double entendre to capitalize on this contradiction.
In the mid-17th century, dick became slang for a man as a sexual partner. For example, in the 1665 satire The English Rogue by Richard Head, a "dick" procured to impregnate a character that is having difficulty conceiving:
“The next Dick I pickt up for her was a man of a colour as contrary to the former, as light is to darkness, being swarthy; whose hair was as black as a sloe; middle statur'd, well set, both strong and active, a man so universally tryed, and so fruitfully successful, that there was hardly any female within ten miles gotten with child in hugger-mugger, but he was more than suspected to be Father of all the legitimate. Yet this too, proved an ineffectual Operator.”
An 1869 slang dictionary offered definitions of dick including "a riding whip" and an abbreviation of dictionary, also noting that in the North Country, it was used as a verb to indicate that a policeman was eyeing the subject. The term came to be associated with the penis through usage by men in the military around the 1880s.
The term "dick" was originally used to describe a vile or repulsive individual in the 1960s.
- A stupid, annoying, or objectionable person (esp. a male); one whose behaviour is considered knowingly obnoxious, provocative, or disruptive. Cf. dick n.1 6.
1960 S. Martinelli Let. 28 Dec. in C. Bukowski & S. Martinelli Beerspit Night & Cursing. (2001) 132 You shd listen to yr own work being broadcast [on the radio]... You cd at least tell ME when to list[en] dickhead!
Twat
noun Slang: Vulgar.
vulva.
First recorded in 1650–60; perhaps originally a dialectal variant of thwat, thwot (unattested), presumed Modern English outcome of Old English thwāt, (unattested), akin to Old Norse thveit “cut, slit, forest clearing” (from northern English dialect thwaite “forest clearing”)
What does twat mean?
Twat is vulgar slang for “vagina.” It’s also used, especially in British English slang, a way to call someone as stupid, useless, or otherwise contemptible person.
While twat has been recorded since the 1650s, we don’t exactly know where it comes from. One theory connects twat to the Old English term for “to cut off.” The (bizarre) implication could be that women’s genitalia were thought to be just shorter versions of men’s.
Twat was popularized in the mid-1800s completely by accident. The great English poet Robert Browning had read a 1660 poem that referred, in a derogatory way, to a “nun’s twat.” Browning thought a twat must have been a kind of hat, so he incorporated it into his own work.
Words for genitalia and other taboo body parts (especially female body parts) have a long history of being turned into abusive terms. Consider a**, d*ck, p***y, among many others. In the 1920s, English speakers started using twat as an insult in the same way some use a word like c**t, although twat has come to have a far less offensive force than the c-word in American English. In the 1930s, twat was sometimes used as a term of abuse for “woman” more generally, and over the second half of the 1900s, twat was occasionally used as slang for “butt” or “anus” in gay slang.
Twat made headlines in June 2018 when British actor Danny Dyer called former British Prime Minister David Cameron a twat for his role in initiating the Brexit referendum in 2016—and then stepping down after it passed.
Twat is still common in contemporary use as an insult implying stupidity, especially among British English speakers.
Even though it’s a common term, twat is still vulgar and causes a stir when used in a public setting, especially due to its sexist nature. Public figures that call someone a twat are often publicly derided. Online, users sometimes censor the term, rendering it as tw*t or tw@t.
If you’re annoying, you might be accused of twattiness; if you’re messing around or procrastinating, you might be twatting around; if you’re going on about something, you might be twatting on. Twatting is also sometimes substituted for the intensifier ”fucking”.
As a term of abuse: a contemptible or obnoxious person; a person who behaves stupidly; a fool, an idiot. Now chiefly British.
The force of this term can vary widely. Especially when applied to a woman, it can be as derogatory and offensive as the term cunt (cunt n. 2a), but it can also be used (especially of men) as a milder form of abuse without conscious reference to the female genitals, often implying that a person's behaviour, appearance, etc., is stupid or idiotic, with little or no greater force than twit (twit n.1 2b).
1922 ‘J. H. Ross’ Mint (1936) xxxv. 110 The silly twat didn't know if his arse-hole was bored, punched, drilled, or countersunk.
The top 10 movies with the most swear words:
- The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013) – 715
- Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safide, 2019) – 646
- Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995) – 606
- Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith, 2001) – 509
- Fury (David Ayer, 2014) – 489
- Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray, 2015) – 468
- Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999) – 467
- Nil By Mouth (Gary Oldman, 1997) – 432
- Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) – 418
- Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (Mike Judge, 1996) – 414