gammon

an insulting reference to a middle-aged white male who angrily expresses his right-wing political views

Just a few short months ago, if you mentioned the word gammon to a native speaker of British English, they'd undoubtedly visualise a slab of pink and salty grilled meat accompanied by a limp fried egg and a pile of chips. But in 2018 this innocent, hitherto not remotely offensive restaurant staple abruptly acquired a rather nasty alter ego when it began to refer not just to meat, but to men of a particular demographic

the word gammon burst onto the scene in May 2018 when it entered the popular radar as the insult of choice for middle-aged men outspoken in their right-wing (more specifically UK Conservative) political persuasion

In a sudden flurry of social media posts, news broadcasts and columns, the word gammon burst onto the scene in May 2018 when it entered the popular radar as the insult of choice for middle-aged men outspoken in their right-wing (more specifically UK Conservative) political persuasion. The signature pink hue of gammon meat functions here as a metaphor for the rosy complexion of said older white males, the redness of their cheeks often directly proportional to the intensity of their outrage. This new insult had in fact been slowly gaining ground since the UK's Brexit referendum and snap general election in 2017. It then gained significant momentum with a tongue-in-cheek internet post known as 'the Great Wall of Gammon' – a photo montage of rosy-faced men appearing on the BBC's Question Time, a TV series that features a topical debate between politicians and members of the audience.

Predictably, use of the term has sparked controversy, and has even been dubbed 'racist', though prevailing opinion is that this is a laughable contention, or at least difficult to take seriously in relative terms. Perhaps more significantly, gammon has been seen as a left-wing retort to snowflake, a term which emerged in the last couple of years as a dismissive reference to a younger person being 'oversensitive' when they challenge dominant political views. It's also been suggested that the emergence of the two words is a linguistic reflection of the simmering political divide between older people who supported Brexit and the younger generation who voted to remain in the EU.

Background – gammon

Original use of this alternative, 'racially offensive' gammon in fact predates the Brexit referendum, first popping up courtesy of writer Caitlin Moran who described then Prime minister David Cameron as a 'C3PO made of ham' and a 'gammon robot'. But delving deeper, it transpires that derogatory use of gammon has been around far longer than you might imagine. The compound adjective gammon-faced is an insult from the early 17th century, and gammon was also used as an exclamation meaning 'nonsense', as in 'That's gammon.' It was apparently used by Charles Dickens in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and was even at one time a verb, meaning 'to hoax or deceive someone'.

Though the English language has no shortage of insults, it seems that they just keep on coming. Expressions mouthbreather and humblebragger, now in the BuzzWord archive, continue to thrive. Other more recent additions to the vocabulary of name-calling include broflake – a man who is easily upset or offended, especially by ideas that go against his more conventional views (this is a blend of snowflake as an insult and bro, used informally in US English as a male form of address), and askhole – a person who continually asks stupid questions (a blend of verb ask and US asshole as an offensive reference to a stupid or annoying person).