Scumbag

President Vladimir Putin of Russia remarked of Sergei Skripal, whom his agents tried to kill, ‘He’s simply a scumbag.’ Scumbag at least is how the press translated his words. I’m afraid that from my sheltered life I did not know the literal meaning of scumbag. Look away now if you’d rather not know and I’ll join you at the next paragraph. Literally it is ‘a condom’, an Americanism first recorded in 1967, which is also the first year in which scum meaning ‘semen’ is recorded.

An equivalent derogatory term also of American origin, used in the television cartoon Family Guy, is douchebag. This is older than scumbag in its literal sense, referring to a vaginal douche since the 1880s, and passing into military slang as a term of abuse in the 1940s.

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Louise Perry

The Rotherham cover-up

Of course, Mr Putin didn’t use any such American English term, but said podonok.