cur, you

   This is a contemptuous word for a dog, and therefore even more contemptuous when applied to a man. Shakespeare is rather fond of it as a term of abuse. In The Tempest Sebastian and Antonio object to the boatswain’s cries. ‘Hang, cur; hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker,’ says Antonio, while Sebastian calls him ‘you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog’. The word is used as a reinforcement for ‘dog’ in a similar way in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘Out, dog! out, cur! Thou driv’st me past the bounds/Of maiden’s patience,’ says Hermia to Demetrius. King Lear tells Oswald he is ‘a whoreson dog’, ‘a slave’, ‘a cur’, and ‘you whoreson cur’ twice occurs in Troilus and Cressida, on one occasion expanded to ‘you whoreson indistinguishable cur’. ‘Cur’ lived on into the eighteenth century and beyond as a term of reproach, but it would sound very old-fashioned indeed were it to be used in modern times. It is suspiciously literary, rather than a reflection of real life, when it occurs in Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner, a children’s story first published in 1894. A father there says to his young child: ‘You contemptible young cur! I’ll thrash this mean spirit of lying and cowardice out of you, or kill you in the attempt.’ Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson was published at about the same time, and has a man calling his nephew, whom he considers to have disgraced the family name, ‘you cur! you scum! you vermin!’