Douchebag, what a word. But where did one of America’s premier insults come from?
Wikipedia defines Douchebag as:
“The term usually refers to a person, usually male, with a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and engaging in obnoxious and/or irritating actions, most often without malicious intent.”
Which is as good as a definition as any. Most sources seem to agree that the term douchebag originated as a pejorative sometime during the ’30s. By the ’60s, it was originally used to refer to an “unattractive co-ed” or a “woman of loose moral repute”. Exactly when the term switched from a female-focused insult to a male one remains unknown.
By the ’70s & ’80s douchebag had developed into a general insult towards males. By the ’00s the term had come to describe a certain type of male: gelled, bronzed, buff and with “an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intelligence”.
Throughout the 00s douchebag rose in popularity, by 2008 a reader’s letter to Gawker.com declared the term “completely played out” and should be dropped from people’s vocabulary.
Of course, declaring a word “played out” rarely kills it. If anything, douchebag seems to have thrived in the years since that obituary was written. Perhaps the term endures because we keep finding new people who fit it.