Why does Jimmy say retart instead of retard?

0  2014-09-29 by OrlandoLL

Is it a regional thing?

9 comments

That's the way smard people say it.

Ronnie B does this, and generally ends all words in a "d" as a "t." I remember he'd call East Side Dave a "red-headet bastert." Def seems like a Philly thing, as slimpop so adroitly intimated.

That's funny, seeing how he was mocking Steve Harvey for doing the same thing on Family Feud in a clip they played on O&A a few months back.

Why do they say standing on line instead of standing in line.

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Could very well be, I'm from Philly, a lot of people say retart around here.

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I assure you I am most certainly not a member of the Philly Crew.

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Probably the same reason he said "thin laminants".

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He's from jersey.

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"tart" is an extension of tard, or rather a dumbing-down, so as to make it sound more hurtful. In the Henry Higgins sense, the sharpness of a t comes off as more flippant and careless than the bluntness of a d, and flippancy and carelessness - dumbness in general - are more conducive to bullying and meanness.

I'm not sure how but it relates to Carlin's bit about adding syllables to make terms and ideas more euphemistic (the "shell shock" bit). If you notice, the fewer syllables a pejorative word has, the more hurtful it comes off. The idea behind it is basically "yeah I'm a dumb meathead...what're you gonna do about it? I'm still gonna punch your face in nerd."

It's hard to make an argument that t fits the criteria better than d when both words are one syllable, but I'm certain that's the explanation, or pretty close to it.