scoundrel, you

   An insult much used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, addressed to men who were considered to be contemptible.

   The word was in use by the end of the sixteenth century, describing a mean fellow at that time, but Shakespearean heroes do not use the word in their taunting of other men. Its origin is something of a mystery, though Professor Weekley draws attention in his Etymological Dictionary of Modern English to Old French escondre, itself from Latin ex condere, suggesting a man who is evasive or has something to hide.

   In Fielding’s Tom Jones a woman tells a man that he is a ‘saucy scoundrel’, while in Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle a man tells another that he is an ‘impertinent scoundrel’. The latter exclamation earns the speaker a punch on the nose. ‘You twopenny scoundrel’ occurs in George Eliot”s Scenes of Clerical Life, and Mr Snodgrass, in The Pickwick Papers, greets the representatives of the law with: ‘What do you want here, scoundrels?’

   In a passage of general interest to those who use insulting terms to others, scoundrel occurs in Boucicault’s comedy London Assurance. Cool, a valet, asks Paul Meddle, an attorney-at-law, for advice: ‘A fellow has insulted me. I want to abuse him - what terms are actionable?’ Meddle: ‘You may call him anything you please, providing there are no witnesses.’ Cool: ‘Oh, may I? (Looks round) - then you rascally, pettifogging scoundrel!’ In The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, Jack calls Algernon ‘you young scoundrel’ when he has presented himself as Jack’s brother. Kes, by Barry Hines, shows the term being used in more modern times. A headmaster says to a schoolboy: ‘Fast asleep during the Lord’s Prayer! I’ll thrash you, you irreverent scoundrel!’