clod

   ‘You ignorant clod’ is used by Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis. The term of address may be derived from ‘clod-hopper’, a country lout, one who walks across clods of earth. The ‘-hopper’ is no doubt a humorous allusion to grass-hoppers. In the seventeenth century people also referred derisively to ‘clod-pates’, men whose heads were as thick as clods of earth. For centuries ‘clod’ and ‘clot’ were synonymous, though ‘clod’ is now used to refer to a mass of earth, while ‘clot’ refers to coagulated blood. As vocatives, however, ‘clod’ and ‘clot’ are still interchangeable, referring to a blockhead. ‘Tap the music stand, you clod’, says the first violinist to someone who has been asked to conduct the orchestra, in Brothers’ Keepers, by Frank Smith.