The Strange Death of Pillock

[Jivby]

When I was a kid in the 80s, pillocks were everywhere. Even I was sometimes a pillock. Nowadays you never hear about pillocks. It’s gone the way of wazzock and bounder.

AIBU to rail against the death of pillock?

Sometimes you hear younger ones using Boomer slang, as some call it. Heard wally and crumbs from a nephew's friends!

My dad calls stupid people an 18 carat Wilf!! Which i love🤣 and I call my dog a big girls blouse loads cos she is soppy!!

Pilchard is one of my gentle non sweary ones , ( mainly used for DS)

And "Sonny Jim"

Love saying plonker and I might have to start using div too. Haven't heard that in ages. Spanner is also excellent but for some reason I think I'd feel more self conscious trying to bring that back. Was it ever very widespread? Not sure I've ever really used pillock or berk though. I said bonk the other day and it was very satisfying.

Nor does my non-swearing mother! 😬🤣

I called one of my children a plonker the other day 😂 Great word

Numpty also as good as plonker! My child has also been called this 😆 He doesn’t seem too fazed

Pillock is a great word, I’m going to start using it again.

DF would refer to someone who wasn’t that bright as a right Herbert, always made me laugh!

I like all of these. I've recently reintroduced divot, as in the formal version (or so my understanding goes) of divvy.

I still use div quite a lot. One of my colleagues is nicknamed Spanner… her real name is Anna - she did something daft years ago (can’t remember what now) and Spanner stuck! That sounds bad reading it back, but it’s affectionate and she uses it herself. And it’s mild compared to some of the other nicknames (I should add we have all known each other a long time and get on very well!).

Thread title sounds like a novel by John Irving.

I thought divots were lumpy bits of turf churned up by horses, sods if you will.

Wazzock is a nice gentle insult, also muppet.

Toerag is a little more harsh.

Ahh if she's in Liverpool she can have "Melt"

I use pillock with dc in the USA, it lands well here.

🤣🤣🤣
But so many people just ARE bellends!

Wally always feels like a quintessentially 80s word to me - see also bonking.

I think lummox is ripe for a revival.

A few summers ago I was driving with my son, came to a small roundabout and saw a cyclist approaching from the left. I had right of way but sensed he was going to keep going nonetheless. He did, I braked and beeped. He started shouting abuse. I shouted out my window "I haven't time for this, you pillock" (no idea where in my brain that particular sentence came from) and drove off. He was left open-mouthed in the middle of the road as I'm guessing he'd never in his entire life been called a pillock!!! My son was mortified "Mum, you're so weird"!!!!

I was going to offer up prannet but I've never heard it used outside my small corner of the West Country (which I left in 1977) so I didn't know if anyone else would have heard it.

Yes, but she's not as good as Kate Bush.

I use pillock a lot as I am trying to reign in my swearing. I’m also partial to using ’daintless’ and ‘doylum’.

I'm a great fan of 'dolt'.

Dinlo is used near me, but I think it's specific to Portsmouth only. Presume it's an alternative to Wassock, Pillock, Twerp etc.

You know you're all just dozy twonks... 😉