1 n female genitalia. Not to be used in overly-polite company. The word, I mean. 2 v thump; hit: I don’t remember anything after the boom swung around and I got twatted. 3 n idiot. Generally directed at blokes. A suitably confusing example would read “some twat in the pub accused me of having been near his bird’s twat, so I twatted him.” On the female genitalia front, so to speak, the poet Robert Browning once read a rather vulgar protestant polemic which referred to an “old nun’s twat,” and subsequently mentioned a nun’s “cowl and twat” in one of his poems, under the mistaken impression that it was a part of her clothing.

n pregnant: I honestly didn’t mean to offend her, I thought she was up the spout!

n penis. The film Free Willie attracted large optimistic female audiences when it was released in the U.K. That could either mean audiences of large optimistic females, or large audiences of optimistic females. Either way it’s a lie. Of perhaps more amusement to Brits was the 1985 American film Goonies, which featured a group of children who found a secret pirate-ship commanded by a fearsome pirate named One-Eyed-Willie. Or how about the Alaskan car-wash company, Wet Willies, who offer two levels of service named Little Willie and Big Willie? Seems something of a no-brainer.