I had to insure I understood things. Thanks guys for allowing me to get the following nuggets. BTW I was trying to figure out who the twit was in all these posts only to find out that in GB is a derogatory insult, a prjorative meaning a fool, a stronger alternative to the word twit. Personally I think the word would get a lot more attention if Tweety Bird or Barry Kripke uttered it.
First nugget:
The word twat has various functions. It is a vulgar synonym for the human vulva,[1] but is more widely used as a derogatory epithet, especially in British English. The word may originate from Old Norse þveit meaning cut, slit, or forest clearing.[1]
Second nugget:
Robert Browning famously misused the term in his 1841 poem "Pippa Passes", believing it to be an item of nun's clothing:[2]
Then owls and bats
Cowls and twats
Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry
Its meaning was in reality the same then as now, Browning's misconception probably having arisen from a line in a 1660 satirical poem,
Vanity of Vanities:
They talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat
They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns
Third nugget:
Another mistaken (or perhaps dialectal) use was in
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1870 science fiction novel
The Coming Race, in an apparent satire on
Darwin:
Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and sententious brevity, this is notably recorded: "Humble yourselves, my descendants; the father of your race was a 'twat' : exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops itself in exalting you."
BTW, in this case the word "twat" means tadpole.
