I invented calling people a douche bag. A long time ago.

[Meditation guide]

I was in the bathroom at age 16 with my friend. She wanted to try douching. My mom's douche bag was hanging in the shower so she got in and used it. When she got out, and I remember what that felt like as if it was yesterday, like this revelation came over me, and I said to her "you douche bag." From that moment on we called each other and everyone a douche bag. She traveled all over the country compulsively and used that term constantly and wrote a few books. It took decades but now I hear my term almost every day.

 

[Wayfaerer]

It could just be coincidence, but maybe not.

I don't understand what's supposed to be especially insulting about it. Why call someone a feminine hygiene product? I never understood that part.

 

[Meditation guide]

I don't understand what's supposed to be especially insulting about it. Why call someone a feminine hygiene product? I never understood that part.

It's my own brand of silliness and it seems to have caught on. It paints a picture of someone who is combination of dopey, a-hole, out of it, dumb, and confused. An individual who has shown themself to be very brainless in one way or another, thus comparing them to the cleansing product for vaginas.

 

[Deleted member 17949]

I never realized a douche bag was an actual item that existed until around this very moment tbh

 

[in hell out soon]

Oh you were 16 in 1951? That's the first usage of it as an insult in literature I believe. It was in Here to Eternity (a classic novel). I'm interested in the etymology of words but if you'd asked me I'd honestly have thought the word was longer than it seems to be tbh

still interesting though

 

[Good4Nothing]

I'm pretty sure it predates From Here to Eternity. I remember distinctly reading in a Shakespeare play: "Et tu, douchebag?"
Which may be an actual quote of Julius Caesar, which makes it even older.

 

[Meditation guide]

in the classic novel From Here to Eternity (here an adjective):

"The trouble with you, Pete," the voice that did not seem to come with him but from that cigaret said savagely, "is that you can't see further than that douchebag nose of yours."

You're right.

 

[in hell out soon]

it happens tbh. I think my "inventing the wheel" words were "buttrumpet" and "pipe cleaner" so don't feel too bad about it tbh.

Maybe we're just more prone to de ja vu for this sort of thing? We probably picked it up from somewhere at some point!

 

[Meditation guide]

Maybe we're just more prone to de ja vu for this sort of thing? We probably picked it up from somewhere at some point!

so don't feel too bad about it tbh.

I don't feel bad about it. It's funny to me you think it would. I know I thought it up as I described. I didn't "pick it up from somewhere". I think it's amazing it spontaneously sprung up in various places. I read a whole history of it just now.

 

[in hell out soon]

I don't feel bad about it. It's funny to me you think it would. I know I thought it up as I described. I didn't "pick it up from somewhere". I think it's amazing it spontaneously sprung up in various places. I read a whole history of it just now.

Oh yeah, sorry. I just had vibes and I just didn't want to hurt anyone. Been having a rough go at it at my tone of typing gets misread as aggressive and mean a lot even when not intended (like I thought in this case) so I was just conscious of the fact I may have overstepped and caused some hurt here.

yeah I think it's a really curious thing about human language - yes it might be inventing the wheel but then it makes you wonder how the word was invented in the first place. I wonder if the words first usage as an insult came from the same sort of place in the first persons mind

I'm confused but delighted to hear it actually does go back to Shakespeare though! That's what I had thought originally but couldn't find anything to back my claim so I had looked it up to see lol. (Id already known about that novel though since I'd had to research swear word etymologies a while back for a hobby... worldbuilding be like that sometimes).

like okay this might seem like a weird thing but I think human language is pretty interesting sometimes for stuff like this. Much more fun than stuff like wars or torture tbh.

 

[Meditation guide]

like okay this might seem like a weird thing but I think human language is pretty interesting sometimes for stuff like this. Much more fun than stuff like wars or torture tbh.

Most people now don't know what a douchebag is. I wouldn't have known but mom had it hanging there in the shower.
My friend was sort of dopey and talking about, trying to figure out what to do with it. so it was natural to call her that but it came to me suddenly like it was the best insult in the world.
I hear it all the time now. I could never figure out how everyone knew about that word, except she had written some books later which were published, and loved to call everyone that she met so I figured it just spread out from us.

I'm glad you let me know about it being in a book from the 50s. Who would think more than one person would think that up?

 

[Good4Nothing]

Oh, I was joking about Shakespeare.
The actual quote is "et tu, Brute?".

In a similar vein, though, I was surprised to read "bit the dust", a still common metaphor for dying, in The Iliad. That makes that phrase almost 3000 years old!