I am always interested by the differences between American and British English. For instance, the word “jumper” used by the British instead of “sweater” confused me the first time I read a book written by a British author, as did the word “lorry” for a truck. “Pissed” to mean drunk and “knickers” for underwear amuses me, although the TravelFurther.net British American Dictionary says that knickers is “a horrible word!” for some reason. Maybe they just object to underwear?

The word that I didn’t find listed on the TravelFurther.net site was “twat,” though it seems a natural for it: twat in American slang has a much more vulgar connotation (synonymous with vagina) than it does in British slang.

From Wikipedia: “Although sometimes used as a reference to the female genitalia, the word twat is more often used in various other ways:

• As a derogatory insult, a pejorative meaning a fool, synonymous with the word twit – ‘You are a real twat and a half’ (often used in the UK)
• To hit something (or someone) hard or violently – ‘Let’s get out there and twat it!’”

According to Dictionary.com, its origins date to the 1600’s, and came into use in the 1920’s as a term of abuse. An amusing story I ran across is the now infamous misuse of the word by the poet Robert Browning, in which he mistook a twat for an article of nun’s clothing in his poem “Pippa Passes”:

Then owls and bats

Cowls and twats

Monks and nuns in a cloister’s moods

Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry

It is supposed that he may have misunderstood the use of the word originally in a satirical poem called “Vanity of Vanities”:

They talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat

They’d send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat

The poems sound much better when you use the common British pronunciation of the word, with the short “a” sound, as in “cat”, instead of rhyming it with “cot” as Americans do.  “You twat!” sounds much less vulgar when you rhyme it with cat, don’t you think (especially if you think you’re calling someone an article of clothing.) You can hear different pronunciations here.

Urban Dictionary lists nineteen pages of definitions for twat. The first entry reads:

1. TWAT

1) A great word to shout out.
2) A woman’s vagina.
3) A blow to the face or genitalia.
4) Used by Tweety.
5) An offensive term for a person.
6) Acronym for The War Against Terrorism.

My favorite is #6, though I am curious about #4. Just how is it used by Tweety?  And who is Tweety anyway?

I thought I was being terribly original by announcing myself in my first Twitter tweet this way: “Okay Twitterworld…I’m in. Tweeting, twitted, twatting…” I soon discovered that I was not so clever or original.  Even British Tory leader David Cameron used the word on a radio show recently in speaking about Twitter: “The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it – too many twits might make a twat,” he said. This apparently caused quite an uproar in the UK, with many Brits skeptical that Cameron, according to one source, “did not realize that the word is usually considered highly offensive, particularly to women.”

The source went on to say that it was perhaps a generational thing, which makes sense to me.  The younger generation would perhaps have heard the American version used more frequently, and may be adopting that connotation.  This seems borne out by the fact that in my readings on the word I found that there two towns in Scotland (in the Shetland Islands and Orkney Islands) named Twatt. According to Answers.com, “The name Twatt is similar to the common English expletive “Twat“, (an insulting word used by someone to express contempt or derision for another individual, although it can also colloquially refer to a vagina). For this reason, Twatt remains a source of amusement to people from outside the village.” I can’t imagine the original settlers of those towns naming their villages after a woman’s vagina, no matter how damp and humid a place it was.