A pissant, also seen as piss ant or piss-ant, refers to a specific type of ant. The word is also used as a pejorative noun or adjective, indicating insignificance. [1]
The original pissant is any of a certain group of large ant species, commonly called wood ants, that make mounded nests in forests throughout most of Europe. [2] The name pissant arises from the urine-like odour produced by their nesting material—needles and straw from pine trees—and the formic acid that constitutes their venom. [3] Formica rufa is one such ant, but there are others with similar characteristics. Forelius and Iridomyrmex are two genera of piss ants. [4] In the United States, the word pissant may refer to any small ant that infests a home. [5]
Pissant is an epithet for an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her perceived significance. A Virginia politician is said to have silenced a heckler by saying, "I'm a big dog on a big hunt and I don't have time for a piss-ant on a melon stalk". [6]
The term piss-ant also may be used as an adjective, usually as a pejorative, to mean insignificant and annoying. In conversations with his advisors during the Vietnam War, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to Vietnam as "a piddling piss-ant little country". [7] In the context of incorporating a celebrity's family into the limelight, Alex Reimer, a frequent guest at Boston's radio station WEEI, called Tom Brady's daughter "an annoying little pissant" in January 2018 prior to Super Bowl LII. [8]
Pissant also may be used positively. Ron Ault of the AFL–CIO said, in describing the relationship of his union to the Pentagon, "Our job is to be the irritant piss ant stinging them on their ankles at every opportunity." [9]
After being defeated 4–0 in a 2009 Australian semi-final football match against Melbourne Victory, Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar's post-match press conference became infamous when he described Adelaide as a "pissant town", with the Adelaide media perceived to be working against him and the club. The rant gained nationwide publicity in Australia. [10]
A character in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle had a specific definition of a pissant as type of person:
A pissant is somebody who thinks he's so damn smart, he can never keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says, he's got to argue with it. You say you like something, and, by God, he'll tell you why you’re wrong to like it. A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. No matter what you say, he knows better. [11]
Chapter 1 of Stephen King's The Stand opens with the words:
Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. [12]
Tony Stark nicknames Ant-Man a pissant in Avengers: Endgame .
In the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown , the title character says, "I'm as good as any piss ant that ever lived!" in the patter opening to the song "I Ain't Down Yet".
Macaroni is pasta shaped like narrow tubes. Made with durum wheat, macaroni is commonly cut in short lengths; curved macaroni may be referred to as elbow macaroni. Some home machines can make macaroni shapes but, like most pasta, macaroni is usually made commercially by large-scale extrusion. The curved shape is created by different speeds of extrusion on opposite sides of the pasta tube as it comes out of the machine.
Bitch is a pejorative slang word for a person, usually a woman. When applied to a woman or girl, it means someone who is belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, controlling, aggressive, or dominant. When applied to a man or boy, bitch reverses its meaning and is a derogatory term for being subordinate, weak, or cowardly. In gay speech the word bitch can refer approvingly to a man who is unusually assertive or has the characteristics used pejoratively of a woman.
A cliché is a saying, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird, irritating, or bland, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning, referring to an expression imposed by conventionalized linguistic usage.
Formica exsecta is a species of ant found from Western Europe to Asia.
Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". In some places, it is simply a contraction of the word and does not carry negative connotations, whereas in some other contexts it can be considered a slur.
Formica is a genus of ants of the family Formicidae, including species commonly known as wood ants, mound ants, thatching ants, and field ants. Formica is the type genus of the Formicidae, and of the subfamily Formicinae. The type species of genus Formica is the European red wood ant Formica rufa. Ants of this genus tend to be between 4 and 8 mm long. Ants belonging to the Formica genus possess a single knob or bump located between their thorax and abdomen. These ants primarily feed on honeydew, a sugary liquid produced by aphids. Formica ants appear to take on a shepherding role with smaller aphids, relocating them to different parts of plants to ensure a continuous food source for the aphids. By doing so, the ants can establish a relatively sustainable honeydew supply for both themselves and their colony.
Formica rufa, also known as the red wood ant, southern wood ant, or horse ant, is a boreal member of the Formica rufa group of ants, and is the type species for that group, being described already by Linnaeus. It is native to Eurasia, with a recorded distribution stretching from the middle of Scandinavia to the northern Iberia and Anatolia, and from Great Britain to Lake Baikal, with unconfirmed reportings of it also to the Russian Far East. There are claims that it can be found in North America, but this is not confirmed in specialised literature, and no recent publication where North American wood ants are listed mentions it as present, while records from North America are all listed as dubious or unconfirmed in a record compilation. The workers' heads and thoraces are colored red and the abdomen brownish-black, usually with dark patches on the head and promensonotum, although some individuals may be more uniform reddish and even have some red on the part of the gaster facing the body. In order to separate them from closely related species, specimens needs to be inspected under magnification, where difference in hairiness are among the telling characteristics, with Formica rufa being hairier than per example Formica polyctena but less hairy than Formica lugubris. Workers are polymorphic, measuring 4.5–9 mm in length. They have large mandibles, and like many other ant species, they are able to spray formic acid from their abdomens as a defence. Formic acid was first extracted in 1671 by the English naturalist John Ray by distilling a large number of crushed ants of this species. Adult wood ants primarily feed on honeydew from aphids. Some groups form large networks of connected nests with multiple queen colonies, while others have single-queen colonies.
An ant colony is a population of ants, typically from a single species, capable of maintaining their complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, numerous sterile females and, seasonally, many winged sexual males and females. In order to establish new colonies, ants undertake flights that occur at species-characteristic times of the day. Swarms of the winged sexuals depart the nest in search of other nests. The males die shortly thereafter, along with most of the females. A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests.
Manele is a genre of pop folk music from Romania.
Aurelio Vidmar is an Australian association football manager and former player, currently manager of Melbourne City.
Antony Vidmar is an Australian soccer coach and former player, who serves as an assistant coach with the Australia and head coach of Australia. He was a member of the Australia national team, competed at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for his native country, and with 76 caps, is one of Australia's most capped players. His brother Aurelio Vidmar is also a former footballer.
Profanity in Finnish is used in the form of intensifiers, adjectives, adverbs and particles. There is also an aggressive mood that involves omission of the negative verb ei while implying its meaning with a swear word.
Dennis and Callahan was an American morning radio show on WEEI-FM, a sports radio station in Boston, Massachusetts. On November 16, 2010, a live three-hour simulcast began airing on NESN at 6–10 AM Eastern time each weekday. The show combines talk of sports and politics, along with current or "water cooler" issues. The show premiered in 1997 with sportswriter Gerry Callahan and former WHDH Sports Director John Dennis, and it received strong ratings until WEEI received ratings competition in 2009 with the launch of CBS Radio's sports station, WBZ-FM (98.5); the ratings began to fall from the peak.
Gay is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
Fuck is an English-language profanity which often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker and fuck off.
Formica pratensis, the black-backed meadow ant, is a species of European red wood ant in the family Formicidae.
The Four Marks of the Church, also known as the Attributes of the Church, describes four distinctive adjectives of traditional Christian ecclesiology as expressed in the Nicene Creed completed at the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381: "[We believe] in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."
Formica sanguinea, or blood-red ant, is a species of facultative slave-maker ant in the genus Formica characterized by the ability to secrete formic acid. It ranges from Central and Northern Europe through Russia to Japan, China, the Korean Peninsula, Africa and also the United States. This species is coloured red and black with workers up to 7 mm long.
Woke is a political slang adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
Formica glacialis is a species of ant in the family Formicidae.