How did “Nimrod,” the name of a biblical character, become an insult? Blame Bugs Bunny. As Mark Nichol explains at Daily Writing Tips:
In a Looney Tunes cartoon featuring Bugs’s fumbling nemesis Elmer Fudd as a hunter on the rabbit’s trail, the carrot-chomping coney sardonically refers to Fudd as a nimrod — insulting him by derisively comparing him to a biblical personage renowned for his hunting skills. Apparently, later generations of Looney Tunes fans who hadn’t kept up with their Scripture picked up on Bugs’s attitude without understanding the ironic allusion, and the word acquired a new meaning, while its original sense faded into the background.
"Nimrod" has to be one of my favorite words. I can even remember the first time I heard it (outside of Sunday School!) and who said it, and how funny it was to me - and that was probably 25 years ago!
Posted by: Marianne | 12 January 2012 at 06:14 PM