dipshit

   ‘Dip’ has long meant a pickpocket in criminal slang, but from the 1920s, in American slang, it took on the new meanings of stupid or eccentric person, the equivalent of ‘jerk’ or ‘nut’. To emphasize the contempt of the speaker for the person being addressed as ‘dip’, the new form ‘dipshit’ evolved. ‘Dipstick’ is considered by Chapman, in his Dictionary of American Slang, to be a euphemistic form of ‘dipshit’. ‘Dipstick’ has been much used in Britain in the late 1980s, receiving a great deal of exposure in a popular television series Only Fools and Horses. Those hearing the term for the first time probably think only of the graduated metal rod used to check the oil level in an automobile engine, something which clearly has no mind of its own. British users of the term would not be thinking of ‘dip’ in any of its more modern meanings, the pickpocket sense being retained.