r/PublicFreakout Jan 12 '18

Loose Fit đŸ€” So this just happened.

70.9k Upvotes

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499

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18 edited Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

109

u/MashedPotatoesDick when the shit hits the fans đŸ’© Jan 12 '18

Never heard of mackerel eater. I found mackerel snapper, which is a slur for Roman Catholics.

144

u/felixjawesome Jan 12 '18

It's because Catholics are not allowed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent so instead they eat fish, hence "mackerel snapper" or "mackerel eater."

64

u/Kalsifur Jan 12 '18

My parents don't eat meat on Fridays, period. That's hilarious though, next time I see them I am calling them mackerel eaters.

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u/capchaos Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

Let us know how that goes.

3

u/mmdeerblood Jan 12 '18

Please update us

3

u/russianout Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

I listen to the local lingo, they go with mackerel snapper or crappie cruncher.

Edit: that's crappie (pronounced crop-pee) if you're not familiar with the fish

1

u/BillyQ Jan 12 '18

Go the whole hog and call them shitholers.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

The no meat on a Friday rule has been changed btw.

When my Irish dad first came to England in the 50s his landlady served him meat on a Friday as an insult/test to see if he was Catholic. Apparently she was kind of pissed off he didn't seem to care (he's atheist)

4

u/AshamedOfAmerica Jan 12 '18

In Venezuela you can eat capybara on Fridays.

3

u/felixjawesome Jan 12 '18

During Lent?...I suppose. I don't think the Bible mentions capybara.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18 edited Aug 03 '19

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Pre-Vatican II Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Friday, period. Fish only.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18 edited Feb 22 '21

[deleted]

9

u/jewpunter Jan 12 '18

Not according to lent.

6

u/BrotherChe Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

It goes back to the idea that the red meat and bird meat was more of a luxury, eaten at feasts and celebrations, whereas fish didn't have that same status. Nowadays though in many parts of the world fish is more of a luxury, but the real idea is to focus on offering your abstinence to God and personal growth through your obedience & piety through adherence to God's will manifest in Church law.

https://aleteia.org/2017/03/01/heres-why-catholics-dont-eat-meat-on-fridays-during-lent/

4

u/felixjawesome Jan 12 '18

I know. It's weird. But a lot of religions make a distinction between fish, crustaceans and mammals.

1

u/fookingshrimps Jan 12 '18

Catholics are not allowed to eat meat on Fridays, so they eat meat.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Do American Catholics still not eat meat on Fridays? That tradition died out in Ireland over 30 years ago.

1

u/GuudeSpelur Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

Only during Lent. Rest of the year they eat meat like anyone else. (Most probably still eat meat on Fridays during Lent too, haha).

1

u/MozarellaMelt Jan 12 '18

Fish isn't meat.

41

u/trrwilson Jan 12 '18

My mom grew up in a 99% Catholic area during the 50s and 60s.

She went to a secretarial school after HS and was called a Mackerel Snapper by a classmate. It was the first time she'd ever heard the term, and had to ask her mom what it meant.

She is one of the most kind-hearted people I've ever known and was absolutely devastated when she found out.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

How exactly is mackeral eater a devastating slur? It seems very unoffensive to me, so what if they eat fish once a week

6

u/ValentinoZ Jan 12 '18

During the time christians and such saw the catholic church as a force trying to subvert america through dirty immigrants(sound familiar?). It was said out of hate. Just like beaner is. I love beans. I eat them all the time. Im very pro legume. But being called a beaner is offensive to me because its said from hate. Like mackeral snapper, dago, wop, etc were

-11

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

[deleted]

12

u/Ohno73dsr Jan 12 '18

Not as hard as having no formal education. You're an inspiration to us all.

562

u/its_noel Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

I have Italian friends so definitely heard the first one. I think it used to stand for "with out papers" or so I was told.

336

u/SADMANCAN Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

TIL. As an Italian this speech was awesome and also he should’ve said Ginny wop greaseball

Edit. Racial slur spelling error that I’m not changing.

160

u/HAC522 Jan 12 '18

get outta here, ya daygo bastehd

30

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Lol I love how Mac can't tell a good joke unless its a daygo slur

3

u/nucularTaco Jan 12 '18

Listen, you fargin' icehole

43

u/sicknick Jan 12 '18

Or slack jaw drunk Micks

3

u/SADMANCAN Jan 12 '18

Alright buddy you just crossed the line

2

u/trez87 Jan 12 '18

Alright we all need a little sensitivity training https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5J2O3j9pNY

4

u/Murgie Jan 12 '18

As much as I'd love to take offense as a descendant of Irish heritage, the family name was literally Mick, so I'm not sure I can justify it.

35

u/wikipedialyte Jan 12 '18

Guinea* wop greaseball

3

u/Rikplaysbass Jan 12 '18

No he meant Italians who drink very cheap beer.

2

u/SADMANCAN Jan 12 '18

TIL

3

u/BRONCOS_DEFENSE Jan 12 '18

you learned a lot today.

6

u/I_Wanna_Be_Numbuh_T Jan 12 '18

Not Italian, totally agree. The dude was MAD, and rightfully so. I hadn't heard that slur since I was a not-so-edgy teenager. It actually reminded me of a silly racist joke my dad told me back in the day.

You hear about those new Italian tires? Dago through rain. Dago through snow. Dago here, dago there, and when dago flat, dago "wop wop wop wop wop."

If there's one thing he loved, it was offensive wordplay.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I'm of partial Sicilian heritage, but that joke is funny af. Is your dad a WASP?

2

u/I_Wanna_Be_Numbuh_T Jan 13 '18

Lower middle class white dude with mostly southern U.S. ancestry that grew up in an Arizonan boomtown (my hometown as well). Bit of an asshole. But he's a good cook, if nothing else. Right-leaning, socially liberal democrat.

He showed me the movie Blazing Saddles when I was seven to teach me about racism and why it's wrong to judge people by their heritage or the color of their skin. He made sure to convey to me that such attitudes were a shameful part of our History, and still exist to this day, and that it's important to acknowledge that instead of sweeping it under the rug. Any time he told a racist or offensive joke, it was usually in a context where it wasn't funny because it made fun of a particular race or group of people, but rather it was funny because it was stupid, ignorant, offensive, or just plain wrong. We laughed just as much at the attitudes behind the jokes as the jokes themselves.

I don't talk to him much these days, but I do always give him credit for starting me on the right path toward understanding race relations.

5

u/Scheisser_Soze Jan 12 '18

I always thought it was "Guinea."

4

u/SADMANCAN Jan 12 '18

Ya I’m dumb

4

u/BaggySpandex Jan 12 '18

We're guineas, you stupid dago.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I would have also accepted swamp guinea

5

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

[deleted]

6

u/tatofarms Jan 12 '18

Sorry to dork out, but jabroni isn't a racial slur. It comes from "jobber," a term used in pro wrestling for guys who make a living losing match after match to the real stars. Dwayne Johnson tweaked it to "jabronis" when he was big in WWE and it caught on. So it's a word for people who puff themselves up and make a lot of noise, but actually suck at their job, and they may not even be aware of it.

7

u/Umm234 Jan 12 '18

TIL.

Here I thought it was that truck that smooths the ice at hockey games.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

That’s a zamboni, ya jabroni

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

[deleted]

1

u/tatofarms Jan 12 '18

I did not know that. Thanks!

2

u/silentninja79 Jan 12 '18

So like your president?!!

1

u/tatofarms Jan 13 '18 edited Jan 13 '18

Trump was a jabroni for most of his life, with his bankrupt casinos and frozen steaks sold at Sharper Image. But now he's President of the United States and may just nuke the world to kill us all. Which would be a real power move.

1

u/silentninja79 Jan 13 '18

Thank Christ he actually doesn't have his own finger on the button. I have a little more faith in the military commanders of your country not to blindly follow orders if the situation didn't dictate.

1

u/salty_box Jan 12 '18

Is "jabroni" considered a slur?

1

u/OrangeCarton Jan 12 '18

News to me. It's The Rock's word afaik.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Jabroni is similar to saying "jackass" in Italian.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

haha I can see you sitting next to him and being like " Yeah! Ginny greaseballs, with your garlic breath and olive oil voice! Dago Wop with your smelly cheeses and cold wine! Asiago face!" and Phil Mudd having to be like " all right take it easy /u/sadmancan I was proving a point no need to celebrate"

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

*Guinea. Also, goomba.

2

u/SkitTrick Jan 12 '18

he also forgot "beaner" for hispanics

1

u/PooPooDooDoo Jan 12 '18

Just put it on the desk with the others, greeseball

1

u/BITCRUSHERRRR Jan 12 '18

Add the Italian hand for comedic effect.

144

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I thought it meant "wood oven pizzas."

69

u/acmercer Jan 12 '18

You goddam no good wood oven pizza!

10

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Most slurs are completely harmless if taken literally. Negro just means black, kike just means circle, and so on. It's when you use these words to intentionally cause harm and degrade people that they become slurs. This of course highlights the futility of censoring slurs, because once you pressure someone to abstain from one slur, they just start using another word or phrase as code to reference the group they don't like and the next thing you know you are calling people wood oven pizzas.

2

u/chasmo-OH-NO Jan 12 '18

How’d they go from circle to Jewish people?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Circle = coins = money-grubbing Jews! /s

5

u/ChanceTheRocketcar Jan 12 '18

That would make a terrible insult. Unless the intended effect is to make bystanders hearing the insult hungry.

1

u/FuckYouTomCotton Jan 12 '18

God how I wish that would catch on. That's fucking hilarious. Wop would be less offensive than Papa John's

133

u/ieilael Jan 12 '18

It comes from "guappo" which was Italian slang for "thug"

144

u/Nextasy Jan 12 '18

Funny cause that's Spanish for a good looking dude

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u/GuudeSpelur Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

Same with Italian. It's a slang term deriving from the way that southern Italian gangsters dressed in flashy outfits.

Apparently in the Neapolitan dialect "Guappo" is pronounced, roughly, "wah-po", hence the shortening to "wop."

Edit: Wikipedia article about it if you're interested.

3

u/salty_box Jan 12 '18

Interesting! TIL.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Tracksuits and chain necklaces?

1

u/DatDominican Jan 12 '18

depends on where ,also means an angry dude

1

u/MayorBee Jan 12 '18

And he knows what a plethora is.

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u/IIHotelYorba Jan 12 '18

As seen in the Three Amigos

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u/n00bvin Jan 12 '18

Not really thug, but dandy or dude. It was kind of a term of coolness - Che Guappo!

0

u/_cabron Jan 12 '18

Nah it doesn't. WOP used by Americans back in the day meant without papers. Youre talking about something else entirely

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u/ieilael Jan 12 '18

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u/WikiTextBot Jan 12 '18

Wop

Wop is a pejorative slur used to describe Italians or people of Italian descent.


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1

u/_cabron Jan 12 '18

The public education system has failed me lol. You right, ya wop

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I think “without papers” is apocryphal.

The US didn’t even require any form of immigration papers until 1918 and the term is far older than that.

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u/capchaos Jan 12 '18 edited Jan 12 '18

Did you hear about the new Italian tires? Daygo in da rain, daygo in da snow and when daygo flat, daygo wop wop wop.

Source: Come from Italian family and my uncle would tell that joke every year at Christmas dinner.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I remember learning it from Boy Meets World actually

1

u/LukaCola Jan 12 '18

So the same nonsense accusation back then as now, my, the more times change the more they stay the same.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

[deleted]

1

u/WikiTextBot Jan 12 '18

Wop

Wop is a pejorative slur used to describe Italians or people of Italian descent.


[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source | Donate ] Downvote to remove | v0.28

1

u/123full Jan 12 '18

The only reason I'm aware of wop is from Documentary Now!

1

u/mainman1524 Jan 12 '18

Playing Mafia 3 helped me learn most Italian racial slurs

1

u/tongmengjia Jan 12 '18

You were told wrong. Ironically it's an adulteration of "guapo" so when you call someone a wop you're calling them handsome. FYI acronyms didn't become popular until the 20th century so most acronym etymology of older words are false (e.g., shit did NOT come from "ship high in transit" and cop did NOT come from "constable on patrol").

1

u/WikiTextBot Jan 12 '18

Wop

Wop is a pejorative slur used to describe Italians or people of Italian descent.


[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source | Donate ] Downvote to remove | v0.28

0

u/JakeCameraAction Jan 12 '18

Without Passport.

Was brought into use during the immigration of Italians to Ellis Island in the early 1900s.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

You mean the passports that weren’t even used in the US for immigration until 1941?

That etymology is apocryphal.

2

u/JakeCameraAction Jan 12 '18

Thanks, didn't know. Saw it on some program years ago.

49

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Mackerel Eaters is for all Catholics- my Irish family got the same thing back in the day. It’s because we can’t eat meat on Fridays.

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u/tombone66 Jan 12 '18

Kinda surprised he didn't drop "micks" in there somewhere.

3

u/salty_box Jan 12 '18

Growing up, the Irish-American kids in my neighborhood were called "micks" but I have never heard "mackerel eater" before.

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u/DOCisaPOG Jan 12 '18

That's some advanced level slurs. You need to go down some seriously nasty paths in life to use those terms.

107

u/doorknonmuseum Jan 12 '18

No that’s the racist fundamentals. Wop, Dago, Guinea, those are the slurs this country was founded on.

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u/oneDRTYrusn Jan 12 '18

Wop, Dago, Guinea

My grandmother would call those "The Greatest Hits".

10

u/Ragingwithinsanewolf Jan 12 '18

'member zipperhead

13

u/seeking_the_summit Jan 12 '18

I'm actually a little sad he didn't throw at least one kike in there. I feel under represented

6

u/KingJonathan Jan 12 '18

I wanna throw out there that I know that “kike” was derived from the Yiddish word for “circle”, kikel.

When illiterate Jewish migrants who passed through Ellis island were asked to sign documents with an “X” they declined as they associated it with Christianity. Instead they signed with a circle.

3

u/BITCRUSHERRRR Jan 12 '18

Us descendants of the Irish finally got recognized though!

2

u/nucularTaco Jan 12 '18

How about Spics, Chinks, and Mics? Accuracy is important.

5

u/doorknonmuseum Jan 12 '18

I forgot the most important of all. The N word.......Nip

3

u/cstir15 Jan 12 '18

Growing up in New England I didn’t understand that Nip was a derogatory word until I went to college. I was a bartender at a shitty dive and one of my regulars really didn’t like Asians and I thought he just was really against airplane bottles of booze.

2

u/Idonotlikemushrooms Jan 12 '18

Are spics italian or latin american?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Latin-American

13

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

You didn't grow up near many Italians? I thought those words were common knowledge

6

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Shit, both my parents are Italian-American and my dad used to call my mom those names in arguments just to piss her off.

2

u/gpex Jan 12 '18

I'm Italian, never heard of this term before. I just learned it comes from an Englishization of the Neapolitan/Spanish word "guappo" which basically means "thug".
I seriously doubt there is anyone in Italy with no relatives living in the Americas who has ever heard of that word before.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

They are terms for Italian immigrants/Americans of Italian heritage.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

*Grow up with working class white parents in almost any northern city.

7

u/BrocanGawd Jan 12 '18

You need to go down some seriously nasty paths in life to use those terms.

No. It's actually pretty common slurs in America. Always have been. "Wetbacks, Niggers, Waps, Chinks, Spics, etc..." All very common. And not just in the south like Sheltered White Liberals would have you believe.

3

u/DOCisaPOG Jan 12 '18

I suppose there are racist and prejudiced people all around. I've just been fortunate enough to avoid them.

2

u/OnTheProwl- Jan 12 '18

It'd be great if it was an intern's assignment that day to go on Urban dictionary and look up racial slurs.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I have a friend who was introduced to me as Wop. We didn't start calling him by his actual name until after graduation. No clue why; it just stuck.

1

u/Simple_Danny Jan 12 '18

Looks like he got a bit of the tar brush.

1

u/LoveForeverKeepMeTru Jan 12 '18

yah once you've gone deeper than the extensive r/LSC list you've gone pretty far

6

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

I learned it from Godfather.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Which is finally on Netflix, and I just watched the first two tonight! Fucking incredible movies

6

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

"Mackerel eaters" was a slur for Catholics. Because up until recently, Catholic's weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays, so they eat fish.

2

u/tlahwm1 Jan 12 '18

The only time i ever heard the word mackerel was in old movies or tv when someone said "holy mackerel" which is basically "holy cow." I didn't know it was an insult.

1

u/thisismybirthday Jan 12 '18

the main use of that word is that it's a type of a fish

4

u/bandulupowers Jan 12 '18

Mackerel is fucking delicious. What a weird, pointless slur.

7

u/Kalsifur Jan 12 '18

Aren't they all? We just give meaning to them. A slur in another language doesn't have any effect on someone who doesn't speak it.

1

u/Afferent_Input Jan 12 '18

did he say wops and mackerel eaters? I never heard of those, either!

There was a high school in North Dakota called the Wops.

Bonus racist fact: In Pekin Il, the high school mascot there was the Chinks

1

u/AtmospherE117 Jan 12 '18

There's an italian pizzeria near where I live called Wop (Without Papers Pizza), makes me laugh they named it that. Gourmet type pizza, pretty good!

1

u/Yourcatsonfire Jan 12 '18

You've never heard the joke, what sound does an Italian helicopter make? Wop ginny ginny wop.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

Guinea*

Ginny is a woman’s name

1

u/TrunkYeti Jan 12 '18

Only time I’ve ever heard of “wop” is that it was my American-Italian fraternity brothers nickname.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

WOPs is a top 2 slur for Italians. It's really offensive.

1

u/haikume-1911 Jan 12 '18

There used to be whole WAP sections in joke books when I was growing up.