blackguard

   This has become a rarely used word, so much so that some speakers, seeing the word in print, might pronounce it as spelt, instead of as ‘blaggard’. When used at all it refers to a villain or criminal, though applied to a child, as ‘you young blackguard’ in Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton, it means little more than ‘scamp’, ‘rascal’. It is used as an insult in Daughters of Mulberry, by Roger Longrigg, and is said with some vehemence in Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, where a girl calls a sailor ‘you saucy blackguard’. The original black guards appear to have been the kitchen staff who travelled with the pots and pans on a wagon as a king or nobleman moved about the country. The term also described the camp followers who performed a similar function for an army on the move. There is reason to suppose that ‘black guard’ was simply an ironic reference to this band of menials, who would no doubt have been dirty enough to be called ‘black’.