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Numpty
Professor David Crystal
Numpty. N-U-M-P-T-Y. Numpty. Gentle word. Very gentle
word. It feels to me like ‘silly billy’ or ‘you novice!’ It
means somebody who displays a lack of knowledge or a
lack of awareness. I’ve often heard it used as an
endearment - ‘oh, you great numpty’, meaning, you know,
‘you should have done better than that’. ‘Silly billy’ is the
best gloss for it, I think.
But in some parts of the country and in some people’s
usage it’s a bit stronger and you can hear the difference in
the tone of voice. I mean, I’ve heard somebody say about
a driver of a car ‘that numpty’s talking on his mobile phone
while he was driving’ and that’s a stronger usage, it means
more, you know, ‘that idiot’, ‘that prat’, ‘that numskull’ –
he’s so stupid that even the simplest things are beyond
him, that’s the kind of nuance there.
So it has a wide range of usage from quite gentle to quite strong. And
then it’s developed, of course, as time goes by. I’ve heard the plural of it
– numpties, especially for politicians, ‘politicians are numpties’. The
number of times I’ve heard that! And also a noun, an abstract noun,
numptiness – I don’t think that’s used very much but I have heard it once
or twice – ‘the numptiness of our politicians’.
And in 2007, it was Scotland’s favourite word. I CAN, the charity, did a
survey of the favourite words of different parts of the country and
Scotland voted for numpty!
© British Broadcasting Corporation 2007
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