The 'invective corrective' is putting our best jibes at risk

A new survey shows that words such as ‘prat’ and ‘nitwit’ are falling out of favour with Gen Z. It’d be a shame for Brits to lose touch with our talent for insults

- Katie Rosseinsky

So long, plonker. Farewell, prat. Goodbye, git. According to a new survey, a clutch of traditional British insults are on the verge of dying out, as Gen Z don’t use them or even know what they mean. Jibes like pillock, numpty and tosspot are all apparently on a one-way street to obsolescence, with people under the age of 28 opting for disparaging terms like Karen, basic or simp instead.

I’d call them ninnies, but if the survey by research agency Prospectus Global is to be believed, then only just under half of them would know what I was banging on about.

Regional insults fared especially badly in the report, with the term lummox (a word that originated in East Anglia, and describes someone who is clumsy and stupid) unfamiliar to 62 per cent of Gen Z respondents. Bampot, a Scottish word for a foolish person that’s thought to be inspired by a pot for storing yeast (“barm” is the frothy foam that appears on a fermenting liquid, and is the root of “barmy”) was similarly baffling: 60 per cent of the young people surveyed had never heard it.

Brits have a long, proud tradition of coming up with uniquely scathing ways to lay into our enemies. Insults can be paradoxically affectionate too, employed jokingly to address the people we like the most. The most memorable ones tend to feel deeply offensive but also a bit ridiculous – and are somehow more wounding than resorting to the blunt instrument of an outright swear word.