"Lapdog" and "snivel"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115166


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "onnanokata" <averyhaze at h...> wrote:
> 
> "dungrollin" wrote:
>  
> I've found this thread very interesting, but can't help but wonder 
> how many other degrogatory nicknames can be made from 'Severus'...
>  
> I can't think of any.
>  
> On the basis of that, it seems to me a mite odd to infer a huge 
> amount from Snivellus.  I somehow don't think JKR came up with the 
> nickname and then cast around for a name for Snape that would fit 
> it...
>  
> Anyone more creative than me?
>  
> Dungrollin
> 
> Dharma replies:
> 
> Kids are creative in their cruelty and lack of respect for one 
> another in many instances.  I could certainly imagine nicknames like:
> 
> Severe Headache
> Severe Pain
> Sneakerus
> Slimypuss
> Slimerus
> Servilerus
> Whimperus
> Gitterus
> Cowardus
> Odorus
> Skulkerus
> Slitherus
> Blunderus
> Confunderous
> Oblivious
> Nausea-us
> 
> I'm not sure that any other nickname could convey so many
interesting negative character traits at once. Snivel conveys a
particular kind of obsequiousness to me that most other words don't. 
I've always speculated that the nickname Snivellus was someone how
tied to his relationship with Lucius. I'm guessing that Severus had an
attachment to Lucius at school that was similar to the attachment 
Peter had to James.

Carol, amused in spite of herself, responds;
Except for one key point. Peter was the same age as the other
Maruaders. Lucius Malfoy is five or six years older than Snape--a big
boy condescending to allow a little one to join his gang as a sort of
hanger on. He must have been impressed with Severus's precocious
knowledge of hexes. (I still say that the chief significance of the
nickname Snivellus is that it's both alliterative and vicious, and
Sirius (who's inordinately fond of it) seems to me more likely than
James to have coined it. Slitherus would have worked almost as well
because it suggests Slytherin and snake--but Slitherus Snape is a bit
of a tongue twister, and it doesn't have the connotations of a runny
nose and whimpering that would appeal to the eleven-year-old Sirius.
As for obsequiousness, I think that fits with "lapdog" rather than
"Snivellus"--in other words, with the deliberately distorted
perception of an adult looking back at another adult's childhood. (Of
course, Sirius--or James--could have been older than eleven when he
invented of the name, but it strikes me as being of long-standing.
James uses it carelessly and Sirius viciously, but Severus is by that
time Snivellus to them just as they are Prongs and Padfoot to each
other. More so, because they use "Snivellus" publicly. It's not clear
whether they did the same with MWPP, which could not have existed till
three of the four became animagi, anyway.

It's 1:15 a.m. and I'm probably typing nonsense, so I think I'll go to
bed.

Carol