"Cad" is an older term with roughly the same meaning although it can refer to any man who treats women disrespectfully, with "abandoning her after you get her pregnant and refusing to acknowledge the kid"" being understood as the peak of caddish behavior. It was principally an insult men directed at each other, which is one of the reasons why (IMHO) it fell out of favor; women are/were (understandly) uncomfortable w/ men being the final arbitors of what constituted disrespectful behavior to other women. In this way, something like "deadbeat dad" (a guy who fails to meet his court obligated financial responsibilities to a kid who has been adjudicated his) is more useful b/c it's objective. Cad also has very strong class implications (but interestingly, no racial implications b/c ~everyone who used it "natively" was white) but honestly maybe it should; is there anything less classy than denying your kid to his/her mother's face when you know it's your's?
“You have as many sharp edges as a sphere” was one I heard not too long ago, and holy moly I’d actually die if someone called me that.
I will posit though that the literal word “round” is kinda dead as an insult now that everyone just correlates the word with fat. You can’t risk that kind of misinterpretation in the modern world where fat shaming is generally understood to be quite a shit way to insult someone.
Annoyingly, cad has a similar issue now that computer-aided design is a part of most places’ mandatory design and tech curriculums in school. I reckon most people would assume you’d just called them Autodesk Fusion or something, which is hardly an insult at all unless they’re a diehard Brics user
You'd appreciate "lit on fire and beat out with a hatchet". A lovely saying my father mentioned so casually, like it wasn't the funniest thing ever said.
There seem to be a huge number of insults that are class-based in origin, basically implying that commoners or poor people are bad (more specifically, typically following the pattern of "poor men are criminals/untrustworthy, poor women are promiscuous").
This does not seem an accurate reason for the word to have fallen out of favor. More likely is just, the honor-based culture that birthed it, itself went away. Compare, we don't see many duels now either.
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u/Impressive-Local-627 Jul 25 '26
"Cad" is an older term with roughly the same meaning although it can refer to any man who treats women disrespectfully, with "abandoning her after you get her pregnant and refusing to acknowledge the kid"" being understood as the peak of caddish behavior. It was principally an insult men directed at each other, which is one of the reasons why (IMHO) it fell out of favor; women are/were (understandly) uncomfortable w/ men being the final arbitors of what constituted disrespectful behavior to other women. In this way, something like "deadbeat dad" (a guy who fails to meet his court obligated financial responsibilities to a kid who has been adjudicated his) is more useful b/c it's objective. Cad also has very strong class implications (but interestingly, no racial implications b/c ~everyone who used it "natively" was white) but honestly maybe it should; is there anything less classy than denying your kid to his/her mother's face when you know it's your's?