The English suffix "-ard" (as in "drunkard", "laggard", "braggard", and "sluggard") is used to make adjectives into deprecating nouns.
"He's drunk" is just a description.
"He's a drunkard" is a moral judgment that finds the subject lacking.
The same process turned "he's wise" into "he's a wizard".
"Wizard" was the medieval equivalent of "smartass".
@BrianBinh I love this etymology because it implies that at some point, someone from England met someone from Spain and all they could think was "this motherfucker is _too Spanish._"
@jewelpit That would be hilarious, but unfortunately "Spaniard" comes to English from French, where "-ard" is just a place name like "Picard".
@BrianBinh noooooooooooo 
Frenchman::: he's too English for our princess.
@BrianBinh @jewelpit You just ruined my day, wiseass. 
@BrianBinh @jewelpit I thought Picard was a soldier who carried a pike?
@samhainnight @BrianBinh @jewelpit nah it's a corrupt union official.
@samhainnight @BrianBinh @jewelpit You've never read the Three Musketeers. (I highly recommend it.)
@stevendbrewer Oooh, an opportunity to push someone to listen to something!
If you like The Three Musketeers, perhaps you like Dickens? Perhaps you have an Audible account? If you do, have I got a treat for you!
#kobnaholdbrooksmith has done a most brilliant job with this book. You feel like you're in the streets with Nicholas and Co.
It's a remarkable book, and Holdbrook-Smith brings it to life.
#CharlesDickens #NicholasNickleby
https://www.audible.com/pd/Nicholas-Nickleby-Podcast/B08DCRTX5K
@jewelpit
"On my word as a Spaniard" "no good, I've known to many Spaniards" -- The Princess Bride fits this perfectly :)
@BrianBinh
What about leopard?
misinfo
@oloturia @jewelpit @BrianBinh The real answer to that is "pard" already meant "leopard," but then someone added "leo" to the beginning to make it the "lion leopard."
No, I unfortunately don't know when or why, but animal names often have convoluted histories. XD
@oloturia @jewelpit @BrianBinh Leo =lion and pard =leopard, apparently
@oloturia @jewelpit @BrianBinh confused medieval biologists occasionally thought it was a cross between a lion (leo) and a pard... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pard
@jewelpit @BrianBinh The initial dialogue between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts springs to mind vividly.
@BrianBinh Isaac Asimov actually had an introductory essay to a Wizards anthology where he wrote about this *at length*
@tzarfenix @BrianBinh
Wiz-ard
Cow-ard
Bole-ard
.....?
Hack-ard
Shit-ard
Whor-ard
Politi-ard
Dumb-ard
Skimp-ard
...?
@lucifargundam @tzarfenix @BrianBinh
Lard
Blizzard
Liddiard
Lingard
Langard
Willard
Garrard
Board
Scabbard
Shepard
Toward
Allard
Hard
Guard
Broward
Forward
Howard
Millard
Soward
Seward
Steward
Menard
Mustard
Dillard
Gillard
Hilliard
Wedard
Windward
This isn't working! Am I doing it wrong?
@goose @lucifargundam @BrianBinh Steward - this guy just makes too much stew
@tzarfenix @goose @BrianBinh puddard
He makes too much pudding. If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat?!
@BrianBinh "You're a smartass, Harry."
It tracks.
@BrianBinh i don't know if I like this better if its true or if you made it up. Either way; top shelf.
@bluedragon It's actually true! Adding -ard to words in Middle English was equivalent to slang today adding -ass. A drunkard was a drunkass motherfucker. A dullard was a dullass motherfucker. A bollard was a bole (tree trunk)-ass thing.
So a Steward is a bad ass cook?
And Mallard duck loves shopping?
Can I seek a second opinion - is @suzie_dent in here yet?
@Cmdr_Halo_Jones @bluedragon Steward comes from "ward", which is a different word. Mallard comes from "male" +ard. Apparently, they were considered particularly butch ducks.
@BrianBinh @bluedragon
That's so disappointing. I was hoping a Steward was great at making Stew. Having someone looking after you with potatoes and lamb just sounds like a nutritional version of a hug.
@BrianBinh @elithebearded @bluedragon Now I wish to revive this usage and refer to a phony person as a “jiveard”.
@BrianBinh @bluedragon oh i am going to be calling so many pillars ‘bole-ass motherfuckers’ now
@BrianBinh @bluedragon So was Richard a wealthy-ass motherfucker?
@biogeo @bluedragon In French, yes: "richard" is essentially "rich bastard". In English, the name Richard isn't rich+ard. It's rik (leader) + hard (hardy, brave), which is not as cool and useful as the French version. We have more need for a quick, punchy word for rich bastards than we do for good leaders. (Thanks for the assist, France!)
@BrianBinh @biogeo @bluedragon I wonder which of those can explain how Richard became Dick
@BrianBinh @biogeo @bluedragon Although the English meaning certainly scans with figures like Richard the Lionheart
@biogeo @BrianBinh @bluedragon Close, but not the same -ard. It's from proto-germanic riks (king, ruler) and harduz (hard, brave).
@richcarl @BrianBinh @bluedragon According to Wiktionary at least, if you go back to Frankish those are actually the same -ard: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ard
Looks like maybe the route through Old French picked up the diminutive/pejorative meaning, while Old English kept the original simpler "hard, brave" meaning? So Middle English ended up getting both.
@BrianBinh @bluedragon thank you for this gem of enlightenment
@BrianBinh @bluedragon This is hilarious; thanks for posting.
And, of course everything on the intertubes is true, but in spite of that I did a bit of googling for references and found this page at wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ard#Middle_English. Apparently, in dictionary-speak, what -ard does is form "pejorative agent nouns", which is what you said but not as funny.
On the same page, the section for "English" has more examples of -ard words..
@BrianBinh @bluedragon what was a mallard?
@ben @bluedragon "Male" +ard. Apparently, they were considered particularly butch ducks.
@ben @BrianBinh @bluedragon it’s a kind of duck that has a shockingly enormous penis.
@shig I think I still have paper copies of their first issue after 9/11. That was some wild shit
@BrianBinh @bluedragon as a Spaniard, I am both enjoying this thread and feeling pissed about it
@BrianBinh @bluedragon and a wizard is a wise-ass motherfucker. Someone who knows so much stuff that now they can throw fireballs
@BrianBinh @bluedragon
OED suggests it's a slightly different derivation, more an emphasis (ie 'really drunk', 'really wise') but sometimes with negative overtones. Fun though!
@AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon agreed, while -ard in Middle English generally creates mildly pejorative agent nouns, it’s parallel in use to Dutch -aard, which can also just create words meaning “__-like person/thing” and in at least some cases comes from Proto-Germanic *ardiz meaning “inner nature, character”.
@AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon while Middle English wysard didn’t originally necessarily mean a magic-user, I haven’t seen anything that suggests it was used to mean a “wiseass”, more a word for someone very wise like a sage or philosopher
@neandertall @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon Is that where German "Art" (kind, sort, manner) comes from? It sounds eerily similar.
@deraffe @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon yeah. In the High German (Deutsch) dialects, proto-Germanic *d sounds shifted to “t” sounds. So “Art” is the regular reflex of proto-Germanic *ardiz “nature, character, manner”. The Proto-Indo-European root word is *h₂ertis ‘an ordering or fixing’, whence also Latin “ars” (art, technique, skill).
@deraffe @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon this High German consonant shift also led to proto-Germanic *t sounds changing to /ts/ sounds, which is why the word for 2 starts with a t in Dutch and English: ‘twee’, ‘two’, but a z in German: ‘zwei’
@neandertall @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon Thank you! But etymological dictionaries tell me its origin is unclear, without even a mention of *ardiz?
Is it time to update them?
@deraffe @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon probably! It depends on who’s writing it and when it was published. I don’t know how they could have missed that one. The meaning is a little different: “nature, inner character” vs “kind, sort”, but I can see how both meanings could be extensions of the even older meaning “the act of putting things together or into an orderly arrangement”.
@deraffe @AlisonW @BrianBinh @bluedragon for a rhyming parallel take for example German “Fahrt”, a feminine noun that declines like Art, and comes from the Proto-Germanic i-stem *fardiz < proto-IE *portís ‘a passage or act of transporting’
@BrianBinh @bluedragon calling all wizards a wise-ass from now on