‘Rebarbative’ is an adjective (AKA a describing word) you can use for someone (or something) that’s repellent, irritating or unattractive. And as they probably won’t know what it means, they won’t realise you’re insulting them. Winner winner chicken dinner.
‘rebarbative’ is a word of two halves, It comes from the Latin word ‘rebarbare’, which is made up of ‘re-’ meaning ‘against’, and ‘barba’ which means ‘beard’ or ‘hair’. Why is it hairy? Well, rebarbative was originally used to refer to something that was so horrible it caused your hair to stand on end. Like spiders. Or Donald Trump.
The record for the world’s longest beard is currently held by one Hans Langseth, even though Hans is no longer with us. He was a Norwegian-American who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his beard was a whopping 17.5 feet (approximately 5.33 meters) long. I realised when I googled Hans that I’d already written about him for former word of the week pognophile, so head to that post if you’d like to know more about him.
Growing your beard super long can be a hazardous business. In 1567, another man called Hans died when he tripped over his own beard. Hans Steininger, or Staininger depending on which page of the internet you look at, was the burgomaster (i.e. head honcho, or mayor) of Branau, a town then in Bavaria but now in Austria. He usually kept his beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 metres) long at the time, rolled up and tied with a leather strap to keep it out of the way. But on that fateful day in 1567, he was responding to an emergency (possibly a fire) and forgot to roll it up and out of the way. When rushing down some stairs he fell over it and broke his neck. Poor old Hans.
