Greetings you wonderful logophiles! Today once more we are delving into that all-too trusty and all-too deep well of insults! I am sure we are all aware of at least one character, either real or fictional, that just does not seem to have the will or the constitution to stand up for what they want. That will let others dance all over them, as they serve their master. Some toxic-masculine types might call these types ‘betas’, others might refer to them as ‘whipped’, but today we shall all refer to them simply by our featured word ‘meacock’.

‘Meacock’ is an old word, one that has mostly fallen from common usage. But, that does not mean that we cannot bring it back! Definition-wise ‘meacock’ means simply a coward or an effeminate person. Digging a little deeper we can expand that definition to an uxorious, effeminate, or spiritless man or a meek man who dotes on his wife, or is henpecked.

When it comes to the origins of this funny-little-man insult, we are left to speculate. THe best guess is that it is a portmanteau of ‘meek’ and‎ ‘peacock’, or from a mixture of ‘meek’ and the diminutive suffix ‘-cock’. There are many fun insults that use this same suffix, but our personal favourite is ‘niddicock’ which simply means literally, “a foolish person” or figuratively, “a noodle’.

Before we leave you let us grace you with this rather wonderful example of ‘meacock’ in context as well as a number of other fun insults. This passage is from the Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, “He will not, trust me, have to deal in my person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus, for all his hundred spectacles, nor yet with the cowardly meacock Acrisius, the simple goose-cap Lycus of Thebes, the doting blockhead Agenor, the phlegmatic pea-goose.”

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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