March 31, 1999

pismire, pissant

I'm a little tangled up here. "Pismire" means "ant," I think, and "pissant," the noun, means one who is insignificant, although I've heard it used more frequently as an adjective, as in "You and your pissant problems." Is there any relationship between the two words, and has the adjectival use of "pissant" become standard?

The two words are indeed closely related; they share one root and their literal meanings are the same.

The older word is pismire, meaning 'an ant', found since the fourteenth century. Most dictionaries still include this as a current term, though it is my belief that it occurs almost exclusively to clue the word ant in crossword puzzles. Be that as it may, pismire is formed from the common vulgar word piss 'urine' and mire, an obsolete word for 'ant' that is ultimately of Scandinavian origin. The surprising initial element refers to what the OED delicately calls "the urinous smell of an anthill" (caused by the formic acid that ants produce) and is paralleled by terms in several other languages that combine words for 'urine' with reference to ants.

The word pissant is pretty much the same thing, but with ant itself in place of mire. It is first recorded in the seventeenth century.

Unlike pismire, pissant is now chiefly used in the figurative sense 'a worthless or insignificant person or thing', found since about the turn of the century. It is also used in comparative phrases such as "drunk as a pissant," in the sense 'extremely intoxicated'.

The adjectival use of pissant to mean 'trivial; contemptible' dates from the 1950s in America and appears to have become common by 1970 or so. It is now widespread. Example: "You are better off without that piss-ant job" (Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (1984)). The use is common, but whether it is "standard" depends on your outlook. I think that the term is still considered somewhat vulgar, and should thus not be considered standard.