Talk:Pissant

Untitled
I'm looking for a good reference about wood ants being pissants. There's not much doubt about the fact that they are one and the same, but the references in the article aren't very scholarly. Lou Sander 01:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I find it difficult to believe that Vonnegut originated the usage of pissant when referring to a person. A cite, such as a dictionary, would be nice. Spope3 (talk) 07:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)SteveP

Adelaide United
The use of a naughty word by a football coach doesn't seem to be notable enough to put into an encyclopedia article. Unless somebody can provide some justification, I'm planning to remove it. Lou Sander (talk) 13:58, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

He called the entire city of adelaide a pissant town. What kind of justification are you looking for exactly? Portillo (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Some reason why this guy's utterance is notable, or why he, himself, is notable. He seems to be a pretty minor figure, and his remarks seem to be about a pretty minor thing. Lou Sander (talk) 23:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I thought you meant it needed a better citation or reference. I wouldnt describe it as a pretty minor thing. He insulted an entire city. Portillo (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this comment does deserve mention in this article: the outburst was very notable in Australia and got nation wide coverage. The term in Australia is now directly linked to Adelaide due to Vidmar's comments. However, I would agree that this should be explained more in the article rather than just an offhand comment that Vidmar made a remark using the word "pissant". Mikhael04 (talk) 09:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Good thinking, Mikhael104! As it stands in the article, (no offense intended to Australians), it's just some pissant football coach using a crude word. But if the reaction was as you said, it's surely a lot more than that. Somebody (you?) needs to find some citations and explain the situation as you did above. Lou Sander (talk) 15:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Done and done. There was a famous "Adelaide Pissants" shirt being sold on eBay, in the style of the Adelaide United shirt, that I wanted to try and get a link too, but sadly the shirt has disappeared off the site. Still, I hope my little edit is enough to explain the situation a bit more. Mikhael04 (talk) 03:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how this is minor. It is a thing that should not be said but was wisely apologised for. The FFA dont think it is minor and all australian football (soccer) supporters wouldn't either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.108.38.253 (talk) 09:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Too many examples
We can't degrade this article by including stories about every use of "piss ant." The Adelaide one is fine because it got some notable publicity. I propose to delete the other recent ones, unless somebody can justify keeping them. Lou Sander (talk) 03:46, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

restoring deleted material
User: Loretta_Modern deleted a substantial amount of well-sourced material in this edit:, giving the only explanation that it was "cruft". I disagree. Also, I think the of the word "cruft" is potentially dismissive, and seems to violate WP:Assume Good Faith. On these grounds I have restored all this material. I would appreciate some sincere dialogue before anyone attempts to remove this material. Thanks. Cazort (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The term has been used in Southeast Pennsylvania for at least the last 70 years to denote a small red or orange ant which has a very strong smell. I do not know anything more about these ants but that was why I went to Wikipedia to look up this term. It would be nice if someone with knowledge of these ants could comment on them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.20.24.145 (talk) 11:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Factually incorrect miscitation
This claims that an unnamed Virginia politician "popularized" this word. The magazine article linked as a citation does not support that claim at all. The article is about a judge and mentions only in parenthetical passing that he once told an anecdote about an unnamed politician using that term. There is no reference to it being a source of popularization and indeed there is no evidence the story is even true, nor is it easily verifiable. Jtcarpet (talk) 02:14, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. It's heresay at best - although the author of the piece, Garrett Epps, is associate professor of Law at the University of Oregon.  I'll remove the "popularized" bit but I'll leave the quote in for now, unless others also voice an opinion that it fails WP:RS.  -- HighKing ++ 19:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the source of the story is reliable enough for the purpose of using the quote in an article about the slang use of the term. It certainly is verifiable. I agree that the "popularized" shouldn't have been there. Lou Sander (talk) 19:34, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * So far, it doesn't seem to be verifiable as a quote. It's reported by the author of the article as a story he was told, but he didn't actually witness the event himself.  So far, I've yet to find any contemporary source to the event.  All sources appear to re-quote the article by Garrett Epps.  -- HighKing ++ 13:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I added "is said to have" to the example in question. I don't know how we can convey the slang/folkloric meaning of pissant without including an illustration of its use. This article once had a lot more of them, to the point that they were interfering with it. It seems to be nitpicking to require the original chapter and verse for a colorful turn of folkloric phrase. Lou Sander (talk) 23:35, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * One man's nitpicking, is another man's lack of verifiable sources according to policy. Adding "is said to have" adds nothing to verifiability in my opinion.   -- HighKing ++ 15:35, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a first for me (the whole wiki-edit thing) so apologies if I'm doing it wrong..but the whole comment added about "pissant can also be a positive" seems to be factually beggared..the example cited shows the term being used to describe a positive force from the perspective of the opposition..which would be a negative, no? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.46.31.127 (talk) 18:51, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Split into two wikis?
I'm a reletively new user so this is more of a question than a suggestion, but should this be split into two wikis? Despite already being relatively short in length, it feels weird to consolidate ants and insults into one wiki. Feels like a good place for a disambiguation Wrappinq (talk) 06:25, 10 February 2024 (UTC)