thy mother

So I was searching Wikipedia for the phrase “your mother” (as you do), and I found this little gem:

Historic usage

Although this may appear to be a recent phenomenon, one can find variants in classical literature. William Shakespeare used such a device in Act I Scene 1 of Timon of Athens:

Painter: “Y’are a dog.”
Apemantus: Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?”

Also in Act IV, Scene II of Titus Andronicus, Aaron taunts his lover’s sons:

Demetrius: “Villain, what hast thou done?”
Aaron: “That which thou canst not undo.”
Chiron: “Thou hast undone our mother.”
Aaron: “Villain, I have done thy mother.”

This entry was posted in Journal. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to thy mother

  1. Cam says:

    Dude, that is awesome. Really awesome.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>