Termagant
(pronounced tur-muh-guhnt)
(1) A
mythical deity popularly believed in Medieval Christendom to be worshiped by Muslims
and introduced into the morality play as a violent, overbearing personage in
long robes (a proper noun and thus used with initial capital).
(2) A
brawling, boisterous, and turbulent person or thing (archaic).
(3) A
censorious, nagging, scolding and quarrelsome woman (not exactly synonymous
with “harridan”, “virago” or “shrew” but with a similar flavor of
disapprobation); for those who find some women worse than others, the comparative
is “more termagant”, the superlative “most termagant”.
(4) The act
of behaving violently; turbulent conduct.
Circa 1500:
From the Middle English Termagaunt (one
of the three fictitious deities (others being Apollin & Mahound)
represented as being worshipped by Muslims; any pagan god), from the from the Anglo-Norman
Tervagant, Tervagaunt & Tervagan
and the Old French Tervagant & Tervagan, a name bestowed on a wholly fictitious
Muslim deity, created by Christian polemicists to use in medieval morality
plays as a symbol of the Islamic faith.
In the Old French, Tervagant
was a proper name in the eleventh century chanson
de geste (song of heroic deeds (from the Classical Latin gesta (deeds, actions accomplished)) Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland). The epic poem is the oldest known work of
substantial length in French still extant and was drawn from the exploits of
the Frankish military commander Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778)
during the reign of Charlemagne (748–814; “Charles the Great” and
(retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814). That the text (more correctly “texts” as a
number of variants have been identified) survived to this day is accounted for
by the work’s popularity; it was between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries among
the most widely distributed pieces of literature in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. The alternative spelling was termagant. Termagant is a noun & adjective, termagancy
& termagantism are nouns, termagantish is an adjective, and termagantly is
an adverb; the noun plural is Termagants.
The
ultimate origin of the word is a mystery but the most supported theory suggests
the construct being based on the Latin ter
(three times, thrice) (from the primitive Indo- European tréyes (three)) + vagāns
(rambling, wandering) (present active participle of vagor (to ramble, roam, wander), from vagus (rambling, roaming, wandering) (the source of which may be
the primitive Indo-European hwogos) +
-or (an inflected form of -ō (the suffix forming regular
first-conjugation verbs)). Given that
possible etymology, it’s argued the appearance of Termagant in Chanson de Roland as one of the three
deities allegedly worshipped by Muslims was an allusion to the wandering of the
moon (the crescent moon a well-known symbol of Islam) in the form of the
mythological goddesses Selene in heaven, Diana on Earth, and Proserpina in the
underworld. The adjective was derived
from the original proper noun, the sense of a “violent, overbearing person”
(later applied especially to “difficult” women) evolving because Christian
scribes always applied these characteristics to the figure; the meaning shift
was thus a “partial transfer” in that the unpleasant personality was carried
over to earthly flesh and blood with no suggestion of anything
supernatural.
Al Malik Al Ahmar (The Red Jinn-King) from an eighteenth century edition of the the Arabic manuscript of Kitab al Bulhan (Book of Wonders).
The
Termagant was a wholly mythical deity invented by Christian writers in Middle
Ages who claimed it was a figure worshiped by Muslims. Depicted as a violent, overbearing personage
in long robes, unlike a number of cross-cultural creations there was no figure which
existed specifically in Islamic belief, theology, or folklore that could be
said to be a model for the fanciful imaginings of Christian polemicists so it
was “fake news” rather than a distorted version of a figure in what was in the
West long called Mohammedanism (also a misleading tern because of the
implication Muhammad is worshiped by Muslims; In Islam only Allah (God) is
worshiped while Muhammad is venerated as His greatest prophet). This was all part of Christianity’s
misrepresentation of Islamic theology as not monotheist and thus in violation
of first two of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus: (1)
Thou shall worship no other Gods and (2) Thou shall not create false
idols. It was a blatant untruth because
strictly Islam was tawḥīd
(monotheistic) and
explicitly proscribed even the suggestion of a pantheon of gods. Unlike Christianity’s claims about Jesus
Christ, the prophet Muhammad was never said to be divine and was never
worshipped. Thus, the so-called “Saracen trinity”
in medieval texts has no basis in Islamic doctrine although that didn’t prevent
the notion spreading and being believed and variants of the techniques of
dissemination have since been practiced by propagandists such as priests and
politicians.
An Islamic miniature (1595) depicting Iblīs (top right) plotting against Muhammad watching over a meeting by the leaders of the Quraysh discussing the second pledge at al-Aqabah, being spied on by the anti-Islamic zealot “the Monk” Abu ʿĀmir al-Rāhib, who is part of Iblīs' plan, New York Public Library collection.
It’s true
that there were then (as there are now) in Islam many figures of authority
cloaked in long, dark robes but that was true also of Christianity and other
faiths. By the late Middle Ages, even if
the fake theology was proving unconvincing, the secular appeal of such a
menacing figure was real and especially in English theatre (where there was
often more leeway granted by the censors of church & state than elsewhere
in Europe), the termagant evolved into a stock character: ranting, tyrannical,
bombastic and often dressed in a costume of a type which late in the twentieth
century the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said (1935–2003) in Orientalism (1978) identified as a clichéd
“exoticized Eastern
costume” (another Western construct). Of Termagant Apollin & Mahound, although
there are in the Islamic tradition no true analogues, there are figures
(perhaps better thought of as “concepts”) in which there are vague or superficial
resemblances to the stereotype although there was never a hint they should be worshiped. The جنّ (Jinn) were supernatural beings made of “smokeless fire” and although some
were rebellious or violent, depending on this and that, they might be benevolent,
neutral, or malevolent but were certainly not deities to be worshipped and seem
never to have been depicted as despotic tyrants in the theatrical sense of the Termagant
of the Christian imagination. Best known
in the West was إبليس (Iblīs/Shayṭān (Satan)) who existed as the primary
adversarial figure in Islam and one representing arrogance, rebellion, and
temptation. Iblīs however seems closer to the Christian Satan than a “false
god”, not being nor portrayed as a blustering theatrical tyrant in robes. Most interesting in the tradition were the طاغية (ẓālim; the tyrannical rulers), a crew made
especially interesting in the last few months, following the ayatollahs’ recent
bloody crackdown on the streets of Iran to ensure regime survival, the
death-toll in January 2026 believed to have exceeded 30,000 and the author and
public policy analyst Robert Templer (b 1966) has estimated that on at least
two days that month, there were more were killed in state-sanctioned violence
than on any day since the end of World War II (1939-1945), his calculations
including the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans. The Qurʾān
condemns unjust rulers (such as the Pharaohs) and to make the point, the ẓālim tended to be overbearing, violent
and arrogant. Those Iranians killed by
the thousand while chanting “Death to the dictator!” would have recognized what
the Qurʾān
condemns but the pattern is known from history.
Lindsay
Lohan (b 1986, right) with former special friend Samantha Ronson (b 1977, left). The couple were a tabloid staple in 2008-2009
but at the time the question often asked was whether a relationship between one
“quite termagant” and another “more termagant” could long be sustained. As was predicted, things ended badly. There
seems no evidence there ever was a collective noun for Termagants. If one is needed, it’s be something like a “tempest”,
“scold”, “railing” or “fury” of termagants.
By March 1945, it was obvious to most in Berlin that the end was nigh
and one individual brought to the attention of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer
(leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)
a salient passage in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (1925-1926): “The task of
diplomacy is to ensure that a nation does not heroically go to its destruction
but is practically preserved. Every way that
leads to this end is expedient, and a failure to follow it must be called
criminal neglect of duty. State
authority as an end in itself cannot exist, since in that case every tyranny on
this earth would be sacred and unassailable. If a racial entity is being led toward its
doom by means of governmental power, then the rebellion of every single member
of such a Volk is not only a right, but a duty.” Unmoved, Hitler responded: “If the war is
lost, the people will be lost also. It
is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental
survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker,
and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation. In any case only those who are inferior will
remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”
Presumably, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026; Supreme Leader,
Islamic Republic of Iran 1989-2026) would have concurred with the sentiments
for, just as the Germans had “failed
Hitler”, those Iranians chanting “Death to the dictator!” had failed him, thus
the holy duty to kill them, not for a motive as base as “regime survival” but
because the protesters were attacking Islam and thus Allah himself. In the Supreme Leader’s theological construct,
killing thousands in defense of God was not merely justified but an obligation.
Over time, in
English, “a termagant” came to mean a scolding or overbearing person, a meaning
wholly detached from its supposed origin in religion and under a number of
influences, it came to be used mostly of women.
The most significant of these influences was literature and the stage,
use shifting from elaborate epics about the crusades to popular entertainment. As a constructed theological fiction Termagant
was anyway perfect for the playwright and had it not existed it surely would
have been created, violence, bluster, and irrational fury staples of
drama. For students of such things, the
shift from the ranting tyrant to the “stock stage villain” was interesting
because in the latter role the Termagant needed sometimes to be a comic
character, bombastic and shouting with deliberate “overacting” often in the
stage directions.
The elongated John
Cleese (b 1939) and Andrew Sachs (1930-2016) in Basil the Rat (25 October, 1979) the final episode in the BBC
comedy series Fawlty Towers (12
episodes in two series (1975 & 1979)). It was in the Fawlty Towers episode The Germans (24 October, 1975) that the phrase “Don't mention the war” was introduced by Basil at his most termagant and in that case Shakespeare would have instructed Cleese to “out-herod Herod”.
So in early
Modern English, the shift began from character to adjective and with the use in
stage drama expanding during the sixteenth century, the transition accelerated. When William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had Sir
John Falstaff faking his own death (Act 5, Scene 4) in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), he spoke of the fierce Scottish
rebel, Archibald, Earl of Douglas as “that hot termagant Scot” and by then there was
no hint of any connection to alleged Islamic deities; it was just about the man’s
turbulent, violet nature. Shakespeare’s characters
run the gamut of the human condition, something sometimes misunderstood by
those who associate him only with what’s understood as “high culture” but he knew that while “overacting” sometimes was essential for comic
effect otherwise it needed sedulously to be avoided. In his stage instructions
for Hamlet (circa 1600) he cautioned
the cast: “Oh,
it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for
the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I
would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod:
pray you, avoid it.” That
instruction also assumed a new life, appearing in modified form in All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602)
as “out-villain'd
villainy” before in the 1800s “out-herods Herod” came widely to be used as a
critique of any behaviour thought “excessive” and by then, in stage productions,
“termagant” explicitly was invoked as verbal shorthand for the sort of strident
ranting sometimes required.
The
suggestion that Basil Fawlty may be thought a “Shakespearian” character is not
flippant and is in the vein of the observation by the English actor Sir Peter Ustinov
(1921–2004) that were the Italian painter of the Early Renaissance Sandro
Botticelli (circa 1445-1510) alive today: “he'd be working for Vogue”. One suspects Shakespeare would have been proud
to have created a figure like the evil J.R. Ewing (from the US TV series Dallas (1978-1991)) or penned a line
like “Round up
the usual suspects!” (from the movie Casablanca (1942)). The
works of Sir Pelham “P.G.” Wodehouse (1881–1975) have a certain charm which
exerts a powerful pull on some critics and often he’s cited as a twentieth
century popular author reaching a similar audience to that for which
Shakespeare wrote centuries earlier. The
politician and diarist Woodrow Wyatt (1918–1997) reckoned: “There are almost
as many quotations in Wodehouse as Shakespeare” and the usually acerbic
Auberon Waugh (1939–2001) mused: “The failure of academic literary criticism to take any
account of Woodhouse’s supreme mastery of the English language or the profound
influence he has had on every worthwhile English novelist of the last 50 years
demonstrates in better and concise form than anything else how the English
literature industry is divorced from the subject it claims to study.” His point was well-made although it may have
been a little back-handed, old Auberon Waugh probably not thinking the last
fifty years had produced many “worthwhile” novelists.
Color plate of Sir John Falstaff by Giovan Battista Galizzi (1882-1963) from The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1923, with an introduction by lawyer George Radford (1851-1917)).
Even before
the scientific and technical advances of the last two centuries-odd led to a proliferation
of creations, the English language's vocabulary was famously large and while
some categories have been more more productive than others, few proved quite as
imaginatively fecund as (1) coinings and re-purposings to describe female body
parts and (2) terms with which to demonize or disparage women (termagant one of
the latter). After the dubious link with
Islam had been discarded, termagant was understood as someone blustering, noisy
and tyrannical; it was in the late sixteenth century there was a distinct
gender shift and the word became specifically female, associated less with
domineering violence and more with shrillness, emotional excess, and scolding,
performed in a theatrical style that audiences coded as unseemly or grotesque,
applying the word to “difficult” women in the world beyond. It was a time of profound social and
political change and as social norms in England hardened around ideals of female
deference, obedience and modesty, the label migrated: While for men “termagant”
had meant (depending on context) threatening or ridiculous, when applied to
women it suggested social transgression.
It wasn’t quite Taliban-level repression but women with minds of their
own were apt to be judged quarrelsome, overbearing and scolding, terms like “shrew”
& “virago” becoming termagant’s companion terms. At this point, lexical fossilization set in
and by the mid-1700, the original sense (the fictional deity) had faded into
obscurity with the meaning stabilized as “a domineering, bad-tempered woman”,
thus the adjectival form “termagant behaviour”.
To etymologists, the long process was an interesting case study in that
the mechanism of changed happened in phases, the theatrical and religious
origins surviving only as residual footnotes while the metonymic shifts were driven
by changing cultural norms, not grammatical rules.
The Royal Navy's Talisman-class destroyer, HMS Termagant, 1916.
It was of course
a good name for a warship and between 1780 and 1965, the British Admiralty from
time to time had seven HMS Termagants attached to the Royal Navy’s fleets, the
last launched in 1943. One with a vague
connection to the original meaning was a Talisman-class destroyer, ordered originally
by the Ottoman Empire but in 1915 requisitioned by the Admiralty (as HMS
Narborough) before being renamed built HMS Termagant. Despite the expectations of decades, World
War I (1914-1918) was not a conflict of great naval clashes and although she
took part in the Battle of Jutland (1916, which seemed at the time
anti-climatic but was strategically decisive), her record was not illustrious
and, sold for scrap in 1921, she was broken up two years later.
Anthony
Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022, left) and his wife Jodie
Haydon (b 1979, centre) with Grace Tame (b 1994; activist and advocate for
survivors of sexual assault, right) in photo opportunity before a morning tea
at the Lodge (the prime minister’s residence), Canberra, Australia, January, 2025.
The “Fuck Murdoch” T-Shirt she made famous
was worn with a purpose. Happy to
discuss the provocative fashion piece, Ms Tame said the message wasn’t aimed
just at media mogul Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) but rather the “obscene greed,
inhumanity and disconnection that he symbolises, which are destroying our
planet. For far too long this world and
its resources have been undemocratically controlled by a small number of
morbidly wealthy oligarchs. If we want
to dismantle this corrupt system, if we want legitimate climate action, equity,
truth, justice, democracy, peace, land back, etc, then resisting forces like
Murdoch is a good starting point. Speaking
truth to power starts at the grassroots level with simple, effective messages.
It’s one of my favourite shirts.”
A difficult woman's sceptical glance: Grace Tame (right) looking at
Scott Morrison, Canberra, Australia, January 2022.
Ms Tame had
previously provided photographers with some good snaps, most memorably her stony
“side-eye” expression to Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime minister 2018-2022), another politician she deemed not to have treated allegations of
sexual assault and toxic workplace culture in federal parliament with
sufficient seriousness, noting his casual dismissal of her as having “had a terrible life”. Less than amused at
some of the commentary about her sideways glance, she tweeted on X (the called
Twitter) that some in the media appeared to have reduced the matter of survival
from abuse to a culture “…dependent on submissive smiles, self-defeating surrenders
and hypocrisy”, adding “What I did wasn’t an act of martyrdom in the gender
culture war.” Expanding
things to a construct, she explained: “It’s true that many women are sick of being told to smile,
often by men, for the benefit of men. But it’s not just women who are
conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. It’s all of
us.”
If Anthony Albanese didn't previously think Grace Tame was “a difficult woman”, he probably now does.
In
Australian political discourse, “termagant” has not often been heard but ALP
(Australian Labor Party) luminary Kim Beazley (b 1948) did in 2008 so label the
Liberal Party’s Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015);
while a by then untypical use, it did prove the word was still used of
men. Unfortunately, that seems not to
have stuck in the mind of mind of the ALP’s Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister
of Australia since 2022) who, during a “rapid-fire word association game” at a function
organized by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp, was prompted with “Grace Tame” to which he responded
“difficult”. The remarks were noted by Ms Tame who had in
the past been critical of politicians who she claimed treated her as a “problem to be
managed” rather than doing anything substantive to prevent sexual
abuse or assist survivors. Whether it
would have been any better had he be called her “termagant” rather than “difficult”
is debatable but at least the history of Mr Abbott being so labelled would have
meant it could be argued it wasn’t a “gendered” word (the history of the last
few centuries notwithstanding). Probably
the best choice for Mr Albanese would have been “formidable” in the sense of
the French très formidable meaning something
like “wonderful” or “terrific”, such a woman being une femme formidable. Formidable
was from the Middle English formidable,
from the Old French formidable & formible, from the Latin formīdābilis (formidable, terrible),
from formīdō (fear, dread); it was
another example of a meaning shift. In
fairness to Mr Albanese, it was a spur-of-the-moment response to an unexpected
prompt and, in an attempt to make things better, he explained: “I was asked to
describe people in one word and Grace Tame you certainly can’t describe in one
word. She has
had a difficult life, and that was what I was referring to. If there was any misinterpretation, then I
certainly apologise. I think that Grace Tame has taken what is personal trauma
and that awful experience that she had and channelled that into helping, in
particular, other young women, being a strong and powerful advocate, being
quite courageous in the way that she has gone out there.” That probably made things worse. Unimpressed, Ms Tame (a most adept media
player) issued a statement: “Spare me the condescension, old man”, suggesting
Mr Albanese was paraphrasing Scott Morrison who’d once explained her attitude as the
consequence of a “terrible life”. Continuing
her critique, she added: “We all know what you meant. A badge of honour anyway. A confession that I’ve ruffled him.” On social media, she found much support, one posting: “‘Difficult’ is the misogynist’s code for a
woman who won’t comply. History tends to
call her ‘courageous’.”
Ms Tame must have resisted the temptation to
order a batch of “Fuck Albo” T-shirts which shows some generosity of spirit but
the Australian Femicide Watch's Red Heart Movement is offering “Difficult Woman”
T-shirts with Aus$5.00 from each sale donated to the Grace Tame Foundation. The garments are made with 100% combed
organic cotton grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides and certified
as compliant to the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard). Depressingly, Australian Femicide Watch tracks
the death toll of women in Australia killed in “intimate partner violence”; in
2025 the rate was 1.44 per week and by the first week in April 2026, 1.23.
Crooked Hillary Clinton,
the termagant of the last four decades.
Although it’s
Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) “crooked” moniker which
will forever be attached to crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of
state 2009-2013), more than most women who have dared trespass on the historic
male preserve of politics, she has attracted gender-based terms of
disparagement. Not content only with
words from English, Mr Trump also borrowed from Yiddish, referring to her
failure to secure the Democrat nomination for the 2008 presidential election as
having been “schlonged
by Barack Obama” (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) in the primaries. A schlong (from the Yiddish שלאַנג (shlang) (snake))
is “a penis” and usually carries the implication of “a big one” so his idea was
one of “man beats woman”; as “woman beats man”, the closest companion term is “pussy
whipped” which for men obviously is quite a put-down. Crooked Hillary has also been called “a tough little
termagant in a pantsuit”, “the virago of Pennsylvania Avenue”, “calculating”,
“disingenuous”,
“a radical
feminist”, “a harridan” (a bossy or belligerent old woman),
a “femocrat”,
a “feminazi”,
“a succubus”
(a female demon who had sex with sleeping men”, “Lady Macbeth in a headband”, “Ms bad-hair day”
and “a shrew”. All very sexist of course and there also been
a debate about whether she should be called a “habitual” or “pathological” liar but she shouldn't complain about that; she has “a bit of previous”.
