Because it has been years since I have had any formal study, I’ve been treating myself to some self guided continuing education, including brushing up on literary terms, figures of speech and such. I came across one yesterday that I am not sure I ever learned in the first place.
Or perhaps I blocked it from my memory.
I am talking about the bdelygmia.
Ah, yes, you say. The old bdelygmia. Actually, if you watch cable news with any regularity, you could hear a commentator utter one in some form at least once a night, especially in the current political climate.
A bdelygmia (the b is silent) is a litany of abuse. It’s been described as the perfect rant, a series of explicit insults, if you will.
The 19th century English author and poet Edward Lear was said to have written that a “vile beastly rottenheaded foolbegotten brazenthroated pernicious piggish screaming, tearing, roaring, perplexing, splitmecrackle crashmecriggle insane ass of a woman is practicing howling below-stairs with a brute of a singingmaster so horribly, that my head is nearly off.”
As my tastes are a bit more pedestrian, I’d say my favorite bdelygmia comes from the movie Christmas Vacation, in which Clark Griswold, after being denied the Christmas bonus he was counting on, says this about his boss:
“I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, ****less, hopeless, heartless, fat-***, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey **** he is. Hallelujah. Holy sh**. Where’s the Tylenol?”
Perhaps you have one of your own, festering in your head or sitting in your Drafts folder, awaiting a cooling off period. Feel free to share; just don’t aim it at anyone.
Word Nymph 
From what movie?
It’s possible, Pig, I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I’m only lying here because I lack the strength to stand.
Princess Bride?
Signed,
The Queen of Putrescence
I know, it was way too easy.
“You warthog-faced buffoon.”
From the Monty Python Architect’s Sketch:
CITY GENT #1: No, no, it’s– it’s just that we wanted a block of flats and not an abattoir.
MR. WIGGIN: Yes, well, that’s the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker’s cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement! You whining, hypocritical toadies, with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding Masonic secret handshakes! You wouldn’t let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards! Well, I wouldn’t become a freemason now if you went down on your lousy, stinking knees and begged me!
And once again Monty Python wins the round!
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