This is unbelievably awesome.

Although [your mom] may appear to be a recent phenomenon, one can trace its roots far back in history. Indeed, William Shakespeare appears to utilize 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?”

“Your mom” can be combined with most types of insults, although suggestions of promiscuity, obesity, or lack of intelligence are particularly common.

“Your mom” is also sometimes used as a sarcastic retort to either a mild criticism or even an innocuous statement. This often results in a sexual innuendo, as in the following example:

Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: Your mom!

Another technique is to respond to the original speaker with “your mom” substituted in for the original subject of the sentence, as follows:

Speaker 1: That car looks like trash.
Speaker 2: Your mom looks like trash.

This all started, by the way, when a few of us were talking about Pogs at work. Remember Pogs? Me and Scott both have fond memories of rushing down to the Pog store to stock up each afternoon after school. Frank’s a bit older and missed the craze. So I thought I’d sent out some info:

On 6|26|07 19:08 PM, “Dickinson, Justin” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs

On 6|27|07 8:33 AM, “Piacitelli, Frank” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbles
BAM !

On 6|27|07 8:35 AM, “Wolf, Scott” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Mom

--
Justin Dickinson

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