GettyWe tend to throw around a lot of slang thoughtlessly, without knowing where it actually came from.
One of the most beautifully British of these words is the commonly used and hilariously cutting ‘twat’.
It can improve almost any insult by being added onto the end and acts as a perfect finisher that leaves a sting.
Getty - 'the most hated man on the Internet' Martin ShkreliTwat is an word that refers to female genitals as a form of insult, but why did this word start being used to describe a vagina?
Twat has its origins in an Old Norse word ‘thwitan’ which a piece of land, which evolved over time to mean ‘a place cut up’ or ‘a place cut off’, which was then adopted to mean a woman’s vagina which was seen as a ‘cut off’ version of a penis.
Big, racist twat…
Twat has been a slang term for a woman’s vagina since the 17th century, but was not used as an insult until the 19th century.
Thwitan later evolved into the word ‘thwaite’ so if you know anyone with that in their surname, it basically means ‘twat’.
So there’s a fun fact you can use to educate someone after you’ve insulted them.
