Insult of the Week

The following insult comes from Crime and Punishment. Katerina Ivanovna—one of the novel’s main characters—yells the following to her landlady:

“And you too?” she suddenly saw the landlady, “…you trashy Prussian hen’s leg in a crinoline!”

Excellent! That’s how they insult people in the the old country. But I confess that I was confused, so I went to Google for a gander:

Here’s a Prussian hen’s leg:

Picture a woman with legs like this

And here’s a crinoline:

…in a dress like this.

Now I get it.

It’s great to peek into history; we can see a place without political correctness. It’s a world where you can insult somebody, and you won’t get banned from Twitter.

 

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