Famously, the names of the two great parties of 18th century British and North American politics began as insults. In the 17th century, ‘Whig’ was a disparaging term for supposedly uncouth Scottish Protestant dissenters, while ‘Tory’ referred to similarly uncouth Irish Catholic outlaws. When the not-at-all-uncouth English establishment divided over the question of whether the Catholic Duke of York should be allowed to succeed his brother Charles II as king, these religiously-tinged insults proved convenient. They were eventually worn as badges of honour, and stuck even as their political significance was transformed over generations and continents. If only the etymology were little more obscure, you could just about imagine American politics a century or so from now divided between the Deplorables and the Nasty Women.
Political insults are perhaps the most obvious linguistic manifestation of political differences. It is salutary to be reminded that they are nothing new, but that does not make it wrong to lament the bitter divisiveness of today’s political language on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dolan Cummings 