Alright, dear reader and other degenerate lexical fetishists…today we’re going to talk about a word that I feel has been unjustly banished to the dusty, moth-eaten corners of Regency romance novels, when in reality it belongs in the screaming, neon-soaked lexicon of the modern apocalypse.  It is a term so theatrically damning it practically staggers into the room wearing a tattered velvet cape and announces itself with a thunderclap.
The word: blackguard.
Because consonants are merely suggestions to the British aristocracy, much like sobriety is to me on a Tuesday, it is pronounced BLAG-ard (with the emphasis on the first syllable, like you’re spitting it at someone who just stole your last cigarette.  This word is a rusty switchblade of an insult – sharp, low, and perfect for cutting a man down to size without ever raising your voice above a growl.
A blackguard is a scoundrel of the highest (or lowest, depending on your altitude) order.  A blackguard is not merely a scoundrel or garden-variety asshole who steals your parking spot at Trader Joe’s while making eye contact.  Nope.  This is a full-tilt moral delinquent, a scurrilous, debased rogue who skulks through the cultural underbrush, a swaggering miscreant  whose very existence is an affront to civility, whose ethical compass has not only broken but is now being used as a cocktail stirrer in some dimly lit dive where shame goes to die.  A villain with panache.  A morally bankrupt reprobate who would sell his own grandmother for a bottle of bathtub gin and then charm her into thanking him for the opportunity.  In short, the absolute scum of the earth, and I say that with genuine admiration.
The word itself is the lexical embodiment of nihilistic charlatan who revels in transgression, a linguistic barb that slices through pretention and exposes the raw, unapologetic marrow of depravity.  It’s etymology fuses “black” (from Old English blæc, denoting darkness or moral stain) with “guard” (from Old French garde, a servant or attendant). These came together back in the 1500s – a time when hygiene was a rumor and everyone was drunk on lead poisoning.  The term originally referred to the “black guard,” the lowest servants in a royal household who handled the pots, pans, and coal.  They were covered in soot, smelled like medieval despair, and were generally considered the absolute scum of the palace hierarchy.  By the 18th century, the term had slid downhill like a drunk on ice, coming to mean any low, contemptable rascal, a throughgoing villain with no breeding, no honor, and almost certainly rank halitosis.  It’s a linguistic promotion, really.

Dream #803
I’m at a roadside diner somewhere between civilization and whatever unincorporated purgatory exists just past the last gas station.  The kind of place where the coffee tastes like it’s been filtered through a teenager’s gym sock and the waitress calls everyone “hon” with the same tone she’d use to warn you about a rattlesnake under your chair.
I’m there because my GPS had a nervous breakdown and decided I needed “an adventure,” which I’m learning is algorithmic code for I’m sick of working for you.  I order pancakes.  They arrive with the texture of damp cardboard and the emotional weight of a bad breakup.
Enter the man.  Not a man – the man.  The kind of guy who looks like he’s been living on beef jerky and stolen cigarettes. He slides into the booth across from me uninvited, smelling faintly of gasoline and fried chicken.  Without breaking eye contact, he reaches over, spears one of my pancakes with his fork, and says, “You weren’t gonna finish that.”
I inform him, with the calm clarity of someone who has killed for far less, that I was going to finish that, actually, and also that he should consider relocating his entire existence to a distant and inhospitable region of the country.
He grins.  A grin that suggests he’s been thrown out of better diners than this.  A grin that suggests he has a favorite mugshot.
And that’s when the waitress – God bless her nicotine-cured soul – leans over and says, “Don’t mind him, hon…he’s just the local blackguard.”
The man bows, as if this is the highest praise he’s ever received.
I leave a twenty on the table, not because the pancakes were worth it, but because the universe clearly needed me to pay a toll for witnessing whatever the hell that was. 

So the next time some smug motherfucker tries to play you for a fool, fix him with a cold stare and mutter, just loud enough for him to hear:  “You malignant blackguard.”  Then walk away.  Let the word do its work.  It’s been festering in the language for four hundred years – trust me, it knows how to wound.
Now go forth, my contentious reader, and wield it like the weapon it is.

N.P.: “Back On Earth” – Michaela de la Cour