"Filthy"-- Re: GoF chapter 24-26 Post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182074

Shelley wrote:
> > Is that it, or it is a "British" thing? Kind of like "bloody"? 
Seems to me  that it's more "Brit" than a replacement for a vulgar
word with the same  starting letter.
> > 
> > Someone British- can you shed light on these words?

Potioncat responded:
> I think you're right. I'm not British, but I remember the word
"dirty" being used with insults. "You dirty rat" comes to mind. It was
also used a lot when the final word had a racial or ethnic meaning. <snip>

Carol responds:
I'm not British, either, but I love words and find British/American
differences, etymology, and similar subjects fascinating.

I checked all the lovely British-to-American sites that I bookmarked,
but none of them was helpful. (One had "filthy" meaning "extremely,"
as in "filthy rich," and two had "filth" as a highly uncomplimentary
term for the police, but that's it.)

It seems to me that the British find the term "filth," which can mean
"refuse" (i.e., garbage) or feces or anything foul and disgusting,
more offensive than Americans, who associate it with dirt (garden
soil) or the various kinds of dirt that children get on their hands
and clothes. americans don't go around using "foul," either, unless
they mean a foul ball in baseball or a foul smell. (I can't imagine an
American child calling a schoolmate a "foul, loathsome, evil little
cockroach" as Movie!Hermione did).

Note "Mud-blood" ("dirty blood") as an insult. Surely, the "dirt"
involved (and, IIRC, the British refer to "mud" as "dirt," whereas,
for Americans, mud is wet and dirt is dry) in this insult relates to
impurity and uncleanness and, by extension, general foulness (and, by
extension, the stench that Draco and his mother seem to associate with
Muggle-borns.)

IMO, the British, whether Wizards, don't need "filthy" as a euphemism
for the adjective form of the f-word. They have "frigging" and
"effing" to serve that purpose already. "Filthy" is an insult in
itself. It may be helpful to look at the definitions for the noun
form, "filth," which go back to the twelfth century:

1: foul or putrid matter; especially: loathsome dirt or refuse 2a:
moral corruption or defilement b: something that tends to corrupt or
defile

(all definitions from Merriam-Webster Online)

Given these definitions, Snape's calling James Potter "your filthy
father" needs no association with the f-word (that unimaginative
all-purpose and now near-meaningless insult) to sting: "Your foul,
putrid, loathsome, corrupt, defiled father" is, I think, pretty much
what he intends by the words. (James, of course, was a Pure-blood, so
Snape is presumably referring to his moral nature as corrupt and his
personality as foul and loathsome--and given James's behavior when
Severus knew him, I can see why he would hold that view.)

Carol, waiting for our British friends to respond to this thread and
supply any needed corrections to our American perspective