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The Brain as the Locust of Human Thought

Not the Adjectivest Noun
in the Place
(A selection from David Tuggy’s blooper collection)

The language of abuse, and especially of intellectual putdowns, is extraordinarily creative: most languages give you many ways of saying “he sure is stupid!” Surely one factor in this is a kind of parallelism of form or method and message: by being creative and clever in describing how dumb you are, I demonstrate (or at least assert in a manner likely to be convincing) my intellectual superiority over you. If I can make others laugh in the process, the laugh will be at your expense.

A pattern or template shared by a number of creative put-downs in English is “He’s not the Adjectivest Noun in the Location/Collective”. We’ve all heard them and chuckled over them: “He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer”, “He’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree”, “He’s not the quickest bunny in the forest”, and so forth.

This particular template adds to the considerations above a clever irony arising from the litotic mode of expression: you really slam the person while pretending (by the modest “not the Adj-est” construction) to mitigate the blow.

Given the assertion of intellectual superiority inherent in the genre, it is especially interesting (and amusing) when one screws up in the process of producing one of these put-downs. It happens! 
  • He’s not the sharpest sandwich in the deck
  • He’s not the sharpest tack in the bundle
  • He’s not the brightest bulb on the candle
  • He’s not the sharpest bulb on the Christmas tree
  • He’s not the sharpest bulb in the bag
  • He’s not the brightest stick in the pile
  • He’s not the sharpest stick in the box
  • He’s not the smartest dog on the fence
  • He’s not the sharpest sandwich in the picnic
  • He’s not the sharpest tack in the shed
  • He’s not the brightest candle in the deck
  • He’s not the sharpest button on the tree
  • He’s not the smartest cookie in the book





Illustration Copyright © 2000 Christopher Tuggy
Collection Copyright © 2007 David Tuggy

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