These are the words you will need if you want to swear like an Elizabethan

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Long-lost swear words used centuries ago have been revealed - and some prove to be a lot tamer than the ones we are used to today.
Among the list of insults are such gems as ‘nippy’, ‘cucumber’ and ‘bald-a***’.
The swear words were uncovered by Dr Todd Gray MBE, who spent years trawling through a staggering 40,000 documents from the church and state courts in the 1500s and 1600s.
His results are presented in the book ‘How to Swear Like an Elizabethan in Devon’ and the monograph ‘Strumpets and Ninnycocks: Name calling in Devon, 1540-1640’.
‘Wittol’ means a husband complicit in his wife’s adultery, ‘cucumber’ was used to describe a husband of a woman having an affair, while ‘tarse’ literally means ‘penis’.
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Research: Dr Gray went through thousands of documents to find the swear words (SWNS)
The documents Dr Gray found related to slander cases where people had complained about being insulted in person.
He explained: “At the very heart of everything is the need to keep a good reputation.
“Reputation had such a big impact on your life and you could lose your job or your home. If a woman had a bad reputation, she could lose her husband.
“I’ve seen references to men leaving their wives because of gossip, or to women who couldn’t get married because things had been said about them.”
Women were often insulted when they were suspected of having affairs, while men in the era were on the receiving end of swear words because of a lack of intelligence or dishonesty.
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Insults: The words are presented in Dr Gray’s book (SWNS)
Dr Gray added: “Today we are dominated by three body parts - and if you insult someone, you call people those things.
“Whereas, back then, swearing was built around bad behaviours.”
Most of the information from the book comes from records of old slander cases, where locals tried to protect their reputation in public.
Dr Gray said: “I am slightly apprehensive as to how the public will react to this book. A good portion of the ridicule in the 1500s & 1600s was fairly sharp.
“I hope I have not gone too far this time. The words and terms were outrageous at the time but I hope they are not still shocking.”
13 swear words from Elizabethan times:
Tarse
Nippy
Bald-a***
Hollow-mouthed
Gouty-legged
Copper-nosed
Long-nosed
Tarse
Wittol
Polecat
Cucumber
Rogue
Knave

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