“He said whaaat?!”
“Sticks and stones …”
Through that simple incantation, the idea of words as malign projectiles was supposed to be nullified. Nah, nah, nah, boo, boo. Despite this workaday defence, it didn’t mean that you didn’t run home crying.
Words do hurt.
The line itself has an interesting background. It dates from the mid-1800s, first appearing in a book about the Crimean War. Alexander William Kinglake, an adventurous young Englishman, set out to tour the Middle East in the early 1800s. He wrote a book, Eothen: Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East. If you know nothing of Eothen or Kinglake — and why would you? — you have him to thank for your first line of peaceful defence on the playground.