Spast

What it means

1. 1.

   Idiot, moron — a disability slur used casually as a general insult, chiefly by teenagers and by adults who were teenagers in the 1990s.

2. 2.

   Listed for comprehension. Many German speakers use it without registering the source; enough others do register it that it now reliably draws a reaction, and it has no neutral use.

Examples with translations

• Bist du ein Spast oder was?

  Are you a moron or what?

  Note: Schoolyard register. An adult saying this in public will be read as either aggressive or badly out of date.

Where it comes from

Clipped from Spastiker, the clinical term for a person with spastic cerebral palsy. Entered playground speech in the 1980s along with the parallel English development, and the disability-rights objection to it is the same in both languages.

First attested: 1980s

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

Spasti