Your sarcasm is showing — and its history is surprisingly violent

Your sarcasm is showing — and its history is surprisingly violent April 8, 20265:00 AM ET By  Ayana Archie nicoletaionescu/Getty Images If someone has ever told you to "take your time" when you're actually taking your time, or called you "Sherlock" after pointing out the obvious, you're familiar with what can be an uncomfortable form of rhetoric. In this installment of "Word of the Week," we're digging into the mean-spirited history of the word "sarcasm." The word has violent roots — but over time, linguists and etymologists say, its meaning has sometimes been watered down to simply be a playful type of humor. Sponsor Message Word of the week Are you sure you know what 'gaslighting' is? Where the word comes from Sarcasm comes from the Greek words "sarx", or "flesh" — and "sarkasmos," or "tearing flesh." However, around the second century A.D., Greek grammarists adapted "sarkasmos" to mean a cutting remark, since there wasn't a literal translation for it, said Armand D'Angour, a professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Oxford. One of the earliest iterations of the word's definition comes from the grammarist Tryphon, D'Angour said, who said sarcasm is "showing one's teeth while smiling." "You do need a metaphor when you're talking about verbal attack," D'Angour said, since words like "assault" and "tear" typically denoted physical acts. The word soon spread to Rome, where they spoke Latin. In the first century A.D., Latin author Quintilian defined "sarcasmus" as a type of irony that uses supposedly kind words to wound someone, D'Argour said. The English "sarcasm," then, was adapted from Latin by dropping the "-us" ending — as is done to many English nouns that come from the classical language, D'Angour said. It's likely that written instances of the word come much later than verbal uses, he said. Still, sarcasm's interpretation and history has "no straight historical line," he said, and shares contexts and uses with "irony" and "mockin...