This is the generative grammar behind Ruth Justice’s epithets — a tagged repertoire of contemptuous diminutives for the powerful, the ten construction patterns they’re built from, the stickiness test a coinage must pass, and the hard guardrail that keeps every shot aimed at the wielding of power, never at what anyone was born as.

PURPOSE: Not a static list — a recombinable engine. Tag, mix, fire. Drawn from Roman invective, Augustan satire, Dickensian onomastics, the muckrakers, Mencken, Bierce, Veblen, and modern coinages. Built to riff from indefinitely.

⚖️ THE HARD GUARDRAIL (NON-NEGOTIABLE)

Every coinage must punch UP — at wealth, power, pretension, hypocrisy, cowardice, self-dealing, cruelty, or mediocrity-masquerading-as-brilliance.

NEVER target: race, ethnicity, national origin, religion-as-identity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, accent, or appearance-as-biology.

The contempt is for what they did with power and who they are as wielders of power — never for what they were born as.

SOURCE-HYGIENE WARNING: Much of the richest historical invective FAILS this test and must be stripped for parts. Roman invective (Cicero, Catullus, Juvenal) routinely attacked targets for sexual conduct, ethnicity (Catullus mocked Egnatius the Celt for his teeth-cleaning customs; sneered at others’ “body odour, toilet habits, hairy buttocks”), and bodily traits. Cicero’s Second Philippic smeared Antony as balbulus — “a linguistically challenged failure who stammers along” — mocking a speech impediment, which is disqualified. SALVAGE THE MECHANIC, DISCARD THE TARGET: Cicero’s transferable move is reducing a powerful man to his appetites — “an overall lack of self-control, which manifests itself in all areas where appetites are involved” (greed, drunkenness, luxuria as metaphor for corruption). That punches up. The stammer-mockery does not. Juvenal’s transferable move is “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses) and the lazy aristocrat who “idly meanders in inherited pastures” rather than earning his standing — that punches up. His ethnic and misogynist bile does not. Pope’s Dunciad genuinely punches up at “ill-educated literary hacks and unscrupulous money-grubbing printers” and the Dulness of the powerful, but also stoops to mock physical “dunce-heads” and a rival’s bisexuality — salvage the mock-epic deflation, drop the body-and-sexuality material. Tag every borrowed weapon; sterilize before loading.

TAGGING SYNTAX

Each entry: epithet — [attacks: X] [pattern: Y] — provenance/usage note

WHAT IT ATTACKS (pick 1+): pretension · extraction · hypocrisy · cowardice · mediocrity-as-genius · self-dealing · cruelty

CONSTRUCTION PATTERNS: P1 diminutive-prefix · P2 mock-honorific · P3 ironic-self-claim · P4 role-reduction · P5 predation-imagery · P6 vanity-deflation · P7 possession-as-identity · P8 damning-allusion · P9 miniaturized-grandeur · P10 sound-stickiness

PART 1 — THE REPERTOIRE (220+ entries)

A. PREDATION & PARASITE IMAGERY (mapped strictly to extractive behavior)

vampire squid — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone, 2009) on Goldman Sachs: “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” The gold standard of extraction imagery.
the octopus — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — Frank Norris’s 1901 novel The Octopus; the famous cartoon of Standard Oil as a tentacled beast gripping statehouses, the Capitol, and reaching for the White House. Use for any monopoly with tentacles in everything.
robber baron — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — earliest political use The Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1870; popularized by Matthew Josephson’s 1934 The Robber Barons. Josephson wanted readers to picture “thugs with spears on horses who did nothing save fight each other and loot merchant caravans that passed under the walls of their castles.”
vulture capitalist — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P5] — 1980s financial-journalism term (no single coiner) for the raider who picks the bones of dying firms.
the vulture fund — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — buys distressed debt cheap, then sues to collect full face value.
bloodsucker / leech — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — the classic; attaches and drains.
the parasite — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — Veblen-adjacent; produces nothing, consumes the product of others.
tapeworm — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — lives inside the host, eats first, never seen.
the maggot at the feast — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — for those who feed on decay they helped cause.
carrion-king — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P2+P5] — mock-honorific predation.
the loan-shark who incidentally makes cars — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — from Cory Doctorow’s line that automakers “reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars”; role-reduction of any “maker” who really just lends.
rent-wraith — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5+P10] — for the rentier who, in Doctorow’s phrase, aims to “capture” value rather than “create” it.
the toll-troll — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4+P10] — sits on the bridge, charges to cross, built nothing.
the company store — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — owes-my-soul; the employer who is also landlord, also creditor.
money-trust mandarin — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P2] — Progressive-era “money trust” + courtier.
the strangler fig — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P5] — grows on the host tree until it kills it. For platform monopolists.
the scavenger lord — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P2+P5] —
gombeen-man — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — Irish folk-term for the petty usurer/profiteer; salvageable for the small-time extractor.

B. MOCK-HONORIFIC / IRONIC GRANDEUR (puncture by over-inflation)

His Lowness — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2+P10] — inversion of “His Highness.”
the Honorable Member for [Industry] — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P2] — names whose interests they really serve.
Lord of the Flies — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P2+P8] —
His Disruptiveness — [attacks: pretension, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P2+P3] — turns the tech honorific into a title.
the Sun King of [sector] — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2+P8] — Louis XIV, “L’état, c’est moi.”
His Eminence of the Quarterly Returns — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2] —
the Most Serene Disruptor — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2+P3] — Venetian-doge mockery.
Grand Panjandrum — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2] — the pompous nonsense-titan; from Samuel Foote’s nonsense prose.
the Anointed — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2] —
Mammon’s Bishop — [attacks: hypocrisy, extraction] [pattern: P2+P8] —
the Right Honorable Self — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P2] —
Pooh-Bah — [attacks: self-dealing, pretension] [pattern: P8] — Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Lord-High-Everything-Else,” who holds every office and collects every bribe.
Sir Oracle — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2+P8] — Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice: “I am Sir Oracle, / And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.”
the Squire of [Gated Community] — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P2+P4] — feudal pretension in the suburbs.
Captain of Industry (said with full acid) — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P3] — return the Gilded-Age self-flattery.
His Munificence — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P2] — for the performative philanthropist.

C. IRONIC SELF-CLAIM (return their own brochure with acid)

the Genius — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] — deploy only in scare-quotes-by-tone.
the Visionary — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] —
the Disruptor — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] — disrupts everything except his own subsidies.
the Job Creator — [attacks: self-dealing, hypocrisy] [pattern: P3] — created three jobs and a tax shelter.
the Self-Made Man — [attacks: hypocrisy, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] — Dickens’s Bounderby, who invented his own log-cabin myth.
the Thought Leader — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius, pretension] [pattern: P3] —
the Innovator — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] — innovated a new way to not pay people.
the Wealth Creator — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P3] — created wealth, mostly his own, from yours.
the Liberator — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P3] — Gordon Gekko called himself a “liberator” of companies, not their “destroyer.” Return it.
the Philanthropist — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P3] — gives back two percent of what he took.
the Patriot — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P3] — patriotic right up to the offshore account.
the Family Man — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P3] — his family; not yours.
the Maker (not a Taker) — [attacks: hypocrisy, extraction] [pattern: P3] — invert the maker/taker frame.
the Builder — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P3] — Pecksniff, “a sanctimonious surveyor and architect who has never designed or built anything.”
the Efficiency Expert — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P3] — efficient at firing.
the Greed-Is-Good guy — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P3+P7] — Gordon Gekko’s creed, lifted nearly verbatim from corporate raider Ivan Boesky’s commencement address at UC Berkeley’s business school on May 18, 1986: “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” (Boesky was later convicted of insider trading.)

D. ROLE-REDUCTION (shrink to a demeaning version of their function)

the rocket salesman — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P4] — strips the visionary down to a vendor.
the landlord-in-chief — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] —
the rent-collector — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] —
the slumlord with a foundation — [attacks: hypocrisy, extraction] [pattern: P4] —
the toll-booth operator — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — for platform owners who tax every transaction.
the middleman who calls himself a maker — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P4] —
the ad salesman — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P4] — strips the “information revolution” to what it bills for.
the repo man in a good suit — [attacks: cruelty, extraction] [pattern: P4] —
the bouncer for capital — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P4] — for the captured regulator.
the floorwalker — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P4] —
the croupier — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — the house always wins; finance as casino.
the pawnbroker of last resort — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] —
the eviction clerk — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P4] —
the meter-maid of the commons — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — charges rent on what was free.
the bag man — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P4] — for the political fixer.
the concierge to power — [attacks: cowardice, self-dealing] [pattern: P4] — the courtier-pundit.

E. DIMINUTIVE PREFIX (shrink stature/importance)

Little [X] — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1] — the master template; “Little Marco” (first tweeted Feb. 2016) shrinks before any argument is made. Per a GOP strategist quoted by Roll Call: “The bottom line is: Trump’s nicknames stick.”
Wee [Title] — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1+P10] —
the Junior [Tycoon] — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P1] —
Baby Gekko — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P1+P8] — the imitation raider.
the pocket Napoleon — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1+P8] — small man, big delusion.
the boy-emperor — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1] — for the unearned-inheritance mogul.
the cut-rate Caesar — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1+P8] —
the dime-store Croesus — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1+P8] —
the half-pint Pharaoh — [attacks: pretension, cruelty] [pattern: P1+P8] —
the understudy oligarch — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P1] —
the apprentice tyrant — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P1] —
junior partner in his own myth — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P1] —

F. VANITY / PRETENSE DEFLATION (self-inflicted vanity ONLY — never biology)

⚠️ Permitted ONLY where it mocks a CHOICE: the spray tan, the hair plugs, the elevator shoes, the vanity yacht, the cosmetic surgery the person paid for to project power. NEVER natural appearance, weight-as-biology, age, or disability.

the spray-tan Sun King — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6+P2] — mocks the bottle-tan, a purchased affectation.
the comb-over — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6] — the elaborate denial.
Governor Goodhair — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6] — Molly Ivins’s coinage for Texas Gov. Rick Perry (also “The Coiffure”); mocks grooming-as-substance: “Governor Goodhair… is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” The transferable mechanic: treat the hair as the whole platform.
the hair-plug Hercules — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6+P8] —
the Botox baron — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6+P10] —
the elevator-shoe emperor — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6] — buys height he doesn’t have.
the veneer (perfect teeth, no bite) — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6] —
the monogrammed everything — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6+P7] — the initials on the slippers.
the cufflink commando — [attacks: pretension, cowardice] [pattern: P6] — dresses for a war he’ll never fight.
the yacht-cap admiral — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6+P7] — never served, wears the hat.
the logo-maximalist — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P6] —

G. POSSESSION-AS-IDENTITY (name them by the embarrassing thing they bought/did)

the yacht guy — [attacks: extraction, pretension] [pattern: P7] —
Mr. Two-Hundred-Million-Dollar Wedding — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7] — slot in the conspicuous-waste number.
the third-yacht guy — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7] — the one yacht to service the other two.
the doomsday-bunker billionaire — [attacks: cowardice, self-dealing] [pattern: P7] — bought the New Zealand escape hatch.
the rocket-ride tourist / the eleven-minute astronaut — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7+P9] — minutes of weightlessness, called it space.
the $6,000-shower-curtain man — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P7] — Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski hung a gold-and-burgundy shower curtain bought with over $6,000 of company money in a maid’s bathroom of his Fifth Avenue apartment; prosecutor David Boies: “If he wanted a $6,000 shower curtain, he could have bought it himself.” Kozlowski was convicted June 17, 2005 of looting roughly $100M. The template for any looted-company luxury detail.
the gold-toilet guy — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7] —
the megayacht-with-a-support-yacht guy — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7] —
the Davos regular — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P7] — flies private to the climate panel.
the second-Gulfstream guy — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P7] —
the $2-million-watch wrist — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7] —
the private-island ecologist — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P7] —

H. DAMNING ALLUSION BANK (biblical · classical · literary)

Biblical / Scriptural

Mammon — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — the god of money; “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon” (Luke 16). Bierce: “MAMMON, n. The god of the world’s leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.”
the Pharisee — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — performs piety, loves money, sneers at the poor (Luke 16:14: “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus”).
the money-changers (in the temple) — [attacks: extraction, hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] —
Dives — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P8] — the rich man at whose gate Lazarus starved (Luke 16).
the Golden Calf — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — the idol the crowd worships.
Judas (for thirty pieces) — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — the betrayer-for-cash.
Ananias — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — struck dead for lying about what he gave (Acts 5).
the whited sepulchre — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — beautiful outside, full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23).
Babylon (the great whore of) — [attacks: extraction, pretension] [pattern: P8] — luxury and corruption.
Leviathan — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8+P5] — the uncontrollable monster of the deep.
Moloch — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P8] — the idol fed with sacrificed children; for those who feed workers to profit.

Classical / Mythological

Croesus — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — proverbially rich king of Lydia; “rich as Croesus.”
Midas — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — everything he touches turns to gold, including his food; greed that starves itself.
Crassus — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Rome’s richest man, ran a private fire brigade that bought burning buildings cheap; the original disaster-capitalist.
Sejanus — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Juvenal’s fallen favorite (Satire X), whose statues, once “second in the entire world,” were melted down “to make pipkins, pitchers, frying-pans and slop-pails.” The courtier whose downfall the mob cheered.
Plutus — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — the blind god of wealth.
Narcissus — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — in love with his own reflection.
Procrustes — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P8] — stretches or cuts people to fit his bed; the one-size brutalist.
the Augean Stables — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — the corruption too vast to shovel.
Sybarite — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — citizen of Sybaris, byword for soft luxury.
the Colossus (of his own ego) — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8+P9] —
Tantalus — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — never satisfied; the appetite that cannot be fed.

Literary

Gradgrind — [attacks: cruelty, extraction] [pattern: P8] — Dickens, Hard Times; “facts, facts, facts.” The name’s repeated guttural “gr” enacts the “grinding down” of workers “without adequate compensation or any compassion.”
Pecksniff — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit; “a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there”; became an adjective (“Pecksniffian”) for unctuous hypocrisy by 1851.
Podsnap / Podsnappery — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Dickens, Our Mutual Friend; complacent self-satisfaction that waves away every unpleasant fact.
Bounderby — [attacks: hypocrisy, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P8] — Dickens; the loud, status-obsessed “self-made man” later “revealed to be a liar and fraud. An utter bounder.”
Merdle — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Dickens, Little Dorrit; the celebrated financier whose empire is a fraud (root: French merde).
Scrooge — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P8] — the miser; pre-ghosts.
Uriah Heep — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — Dickens; “ever so ‘umble,” secretly rapacious and scheming.
Veneering — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Dickens, Our Mutual Friend; “bran-new” people, all surface — new money, new friends, new furniture.
Babbitt — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius, pretension] [pattern: P8] — Sinclair Lewis; the conformist booster Mencken saw as “an archetypal member of the booboisie.”
Snopes — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Faulkner’s clan of grasping amoral climbers.
Gordon Gekko — [attacks: self-dealing, extraction] [pattern: P8] — “greed is good”; Tom Wolfe-era 1980s avatar of the raider.
Citizen Kane — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — the mogul who buys everything and is loved by no one.
Mr. Bumble — [attacks: cruelty, hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — Dickens; the beadle who starves the workhouse poor; “symbolizes Dickens’s contempt for the workhouse system.”
Squeers — [attacks: cruelty, extraction] [pattern: P8] — Dickens; the schoolmaster who profits by starving children.
the Once-ler — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — Seuss’s Lorax; chops the last tree for one more Thneed.
Colonel Beriah Sellers — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P8] — Twain’s Gilded Age; the “eternally optimistic and eternally broke” speculator with a scheme for everything.
Volpone — [attacks: self-dealing, extraction] [pattern: P8] — Ben Jonson’s fox who feigns dying to milk gifts from greedy heirs.
Tartuffe — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] — Molière’s pious fraud.
the Grand Inquisitor — [attacks: cruelty, hypocrisy] [pattern: P8] —
the pound-of-flesh clause — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P8] — ⚠️ USE THE MECHANIC ONLY (merciless literal contract enforcement). Do NOT name Shylock or invoke the antisemitic caricature; the salvageable image is the creditor who demands his bond to the ounce.

I. MENCKEN / BIERCE / VEBLEN — THE AMERICAN VEIN

the booboisie — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P10] — Mencken’s blend of “boob” + “bourgeoisie” (1922). ⚠️ Mencken aimed this DOWN at the masses; re-aim it UP at the credentialed-but-empty elite — the boardroom booboisie.
the smuthound — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P10] — Mencken; the censorious moralist. Re-aim at the performative scold.
goose-stepper — [attacks: cowardice] [pattern: P4] — Mencken (1923); the conformist who marches on command.
mountebank — [attacks: pretension, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P8] — Mencken on Bryan: “a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity… a roaring voice… the trick of inflaming halfwits against their betters.”
the leisure class — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899); those “exempt from productive work.”
conspicuous consumption — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Veblen; waste as a status display.
conspicuous waste — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Veblen.
pecuniary emulation — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Veblen; aping the rich to signal status.
vicarious consumption — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P8] — Veblen; liveried servants and “the wearing of liveries” as proof of a master’s wealth.
the predatory culture — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — Veblen’s phrase for status-by-seizure.
CORPORATION, n. — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary: “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”
POLITICIAN, n. — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Bierce: “An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared.”
POLITICS, n. — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Bierce: “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
COMMERCE, n. — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — Bierce: “A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.”
the Mausoleum — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P7+P8] — Bierce: “MAUSOLEUM, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich.”
ABASEMENT before wealth — [attacks: cowardice] [pattern: P8] — Bierce: “A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.”
the gilded impostor — [attacks: pretension, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P8] — Bierce: “A gilded impostor is he… His crown is brass, Himself an ass, And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.”
booster — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P4] — Lewis/Babbitt; the relentless promoter of nothing.

J. POPULIST / LABOR / PROGRESSIVE-ERA VOCABULARY

plutocrat — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — rule by wealth; Bryan’s 1896 attack on “Morgan and his fellow plutocrats.”
malefactors of great wealth — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Theodore Roosevelt, address at the laying of the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Memorial Monument, Provincetown, Mass., Aug. 20, 1907, vowing “the determination of the Government… to punish certain malefactors of great wealth.”
economic royalists — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — FDR, Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, Philadelphia, June 27, 1936: “out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties.” (Phrase drafted by speechwriter Stanley High.)
the money trust — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Progressive-era term for concentrated finance; Brandeis’s target.
bankster — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P10] — banker + gangster; popularized by Ferdinand Pecora’s 1932–34 Senate Banking (“Pecora”) hearings into the 1929 crash. ⚠️ Note: the word predates Pecora in the press; he popularized rather than coined it.
fat cat — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P10] — coined by Baltimore Sun columnist Frank R. Kent, 1928 (book Political Behavior); the wealthy donor buying influence.
the trusts — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — the monopoly combinations.
monopolist — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] —
profiteer — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P4] —
war profiteer — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P4] — gets rich on the blood of others.
the absentee landlord — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] — Veblen’s “absentee ownership.”
scab-herder / union-buster — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P4] —
the Pinkerton — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P8] — the hired muscle against strikers.
the company man — [attacks: cowardice] [pattern: P4] —
the gilded class — [attacks: pretension, extraction] [pattern: P8] — from Twain & Warner’s The Gilded Age (1873), itself from King John: “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily… is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” Thin gold over base metal.

K. MODERN COINAGES (the living tradition)

enshittification — [attacks: extraction, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P10] — Cory Doctorow, Nov. 2022 (Pluralistic blog; expanded in Wired, Jan. 2023); American Dialect Society Word of the Year 2023. The lifecycle: “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
twiddling — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P10] — Doctorow; the constant per-user manipulation of prices and ranks “from instant to instant.”
broligarchy — [attacks: self-dealing, pretension] [pattern: P10] — bro + oligarchy; entered mainstream via Carole Cadwalladr (The Observer, July 2024); added to the Cambridge Dictionary Aug. 2025. ⚠️ Attack the OLIGARCHY (the cartel power-grab), never maleness-as-biology.
disaster capitalism — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P8] — Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007); profiting from engineered or exploited catastrophe.
the shock doctrine — [attacks: cruelty, self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Klein (2007).
Masters of the Universe — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P3+P8] — Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987); Wall Street’s self-image, borrowed by Wolfe from his daughter’s children’s action figures.
the one percent — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — framing popularized by Joseph Stiglitz’s “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” (Vanity Fair, May 2011) and Occupy Wall Street’s “We are the 99%” (Sept. 2011).
late-stage capitalism — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] —
the PayPal Mafia — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P8] — Fortune (2007); the interlocked tech-finance clique who “sat on each other’s boards” and “invested in each other’s companies.”
Davos Man — [attacks: hypocrisy, pretension] [pattern: P7+P8] — Samuel Huntington’s term for the rootless global elite.
the optimization guy — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P4] — optimizes humans out of the picture.
failson / nepo-heir — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P1] — the inherited mediocrity.
the thought-leader-industrial-complex — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P10] —
the algorithm’s landlord — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P4] —
Pharma Bro — [attacks: cruelty, extraction] [pattern: P4] — the price-gouger archetype (use as TYPE, never aimed at a named living individual).
techno-feudalist — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P8] — Yanis Varoufakis; the platform lord collecting digital rents.
algorithmic wage discrimination — [attacks: extraction, cruelty] [pattern: P4] — sociologist Veena Dubal’s term for Uber-style per-driver pay manipulation; salvage as “the wage-twiddler.”

L. SOUND-STICKINESS COINAGES (rhyme, alliteration, compression)

Shrub — [attacks: mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P10] — Molly Ivins’s coinage for George W. Bush: one syllable, a “lesser Bush.” The compression masterpiece. (Ivins held that “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.”)
gilt-trip — [attacks: pretension] [pattern: P10] —
crony-in-chief — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P10] —
grift-shifter — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P10] —
the suite-life swindler — [attacks: self-dealing] [pattern: P10] —
boardroom buccaneer — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P10+P5] —
the merger-monger — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P10] —
the ledger-lord — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P10] —
profit-prophet — [attacks: hypocrisy, mediocrity-as-genius] [pattern: P10] — the false visionary.
the cash-cassock — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P10] — money dressed as ministry.
the buyback baron — [attacks: extraction, self-dealing] [pattern: P10] — enriches shareholders, starves the firm.
layoff laureate — [attacks: cruelty] [pattern: P10] — wins prizes for firing.
the offshore oracle — [attacks: hypocrisy] [pattern: P10] — preaches here, banks there.
quarterly Quisling — [attacks: cowardice, self-dealing] [pattern: P10] — sells out for the next earnings call.
the bonus-class buccaneer — [attacks: extraction] [pattern: P10+P5] —
smug-shark — [attacks: pretension, extraction] [pattern: P10+P5] —

PART 2 — THE CONSTRUCTION PATTERNS (rules + worked examples)

P1 — DIMINUTIVE PREFIX (“Little ___”)

Rule: Attach a shrinking modifier (Little, Wee, Junior, Baby, pocket, half-pint, dime-store) to a name, title, or grand archetype. Shrinks stature BEFORE any argument is made — a pre-emptive verdict. Why it works: “Little Marco” did the diminishing in the first word; the brain accepts the frame before evaluating the claim. Size-words bypass reasoning. Strategists noted the diminutive’s job is to “diminish an opponent” while functioning as “code words for something else.” Archetypal fills: tech mogul → Little Disruptor · dynastic heir → Baby Croesus · strongman → the pocket Napoleon · mediocrity → Junior Genius. Guardrail: “Little” must shrink IMPORTANCE/STATURE, never mock actual body size. Aim at the ego, not the anatomy.

P2 — MOCK-HONORIFIC / IRONIC GRANDEUR (“His ___ness”)

Rule: Over-inflate with a fake title (His Lowness, Lord, the Honorable, His Eminence, Grand Panjandrum). The gap between the grand title and the grubby behavior IS the joke. Worked example: the philanthropist who union-busts → His Munificence · the monopolist → the Sun King of Software.

P3 — IRONIC SELF-CLAIM

Rule: Take their own brochure word (visionary, disruptor, job creator, liberator, wealth creator) and return it dipped in acid. The contempt lives entirely in the framing. Worked example: “Our Job Creator created three jobs this quarter — two in the Cayman Islands and one for his nephew.”

P4 — ROLE-REDUCTION

Rule: Reduce them to the smallest, most demeaning true description of their function. Strip the romance: visionary → rocket salesman; information revolutionary → ad salesman; financier → croupier. Worked example: the platform CEO → the toll-booth operator of the internet.

P5 — PREDATION IMAGERY

Rule: Map a predator/parasite onto EXTRACTIVE BEHAVIOR — strictly. The animal must match the mechanism: squid (engulfs), vulture (picks the dying), tapeworm (feeds unseen from inside), strangler fig (grows on host till it kills). Guardrail: NEVER use animal imagery for appearance, ethnicity, or biology. The animal maps to the ACT (draining, scavenging, strangling), never the face. Worked example: the distressed-debt fund → the vulture fund that picks the bones of dying towns.

P6 — VANITY / PRETENSE DEFLATION

Rule: Mock ONLY self-inflicted vanity — the purchased, the chosen, the affected: spray tan, comb-over, hair plugs, elevator shoes, yacht cap, monogrammed slippers. Guardrail (bright line): Choices are fair game; biology is never. Hair plugs (a purchase) = fair. Baldness (biology) = forbidden. The test: did they pay for it to project power? Worked example: the spray-tan Sun King · the yacht-cap admiral who never served.

P7 — POSSESSION-AS-IDENTITY

Rule: Name them by the embarrassing thing they bought or did. The object indicts. Insert the specific conspicuous-waste detail: the gold toilet, the $6,000 shower curtain, the third yacht, the doomsday bunker. Worked example: the eleven-minute astronaut · Mr. Two-Hundred-Million-Dollar Wedding.

P8 — DAMNING ALLUSION

Rule: Invoke a figure whose name IS a verdict — biblical (Mammon, Pharisee, Dives, Moloch), classical (Croesus, Midas, Crassus, Sejanus), or literary (Gradgrind, Pecksniff, Bounderby, Merdle, Babbitt). One name carries a whole moral story. Worked example: the data-obsessed cost-cutter → a Gradgrind with a spreadsheet · the fraud-financier → a Merdle whose empire is a rumor.

P9 — MINIATURIZED GRANDEUR

Rule: Shrink the thing they’re PROUDEST of. Toy rockets, the little app, the play-money empire, the cardboard crown. Targets the signature accomplishment, not the person. Worked example: the space-tourism mogul → his toy rockets · the unicorn founder → the little app that taxes your lunch.

P10 — SOUND-STICKINESS

Rule: Make it short, rhythmic, repeatable. Tools: compression (Shrub), alliteration (boardroom buccaneer), rhyme (grift-shifter), portmanteau (enshittification, bankster, broligarchy). One-to-three syllables stick; paragraphs die. Worked example: buyback baron · layoff laureate · quarterly Quisling.

PART 3 — THE RECOMBINATION PLAYBOOK

(a) Find the ONE true salient feature

Every target has a single load-bearing trait. Don’t list five flaws — find the ONE and drive it home. Ask three questions:

Signature PRETENSION? (the lie they tell about themselves — “self-made,” “visionary,” “patriot”)
Signature EXTRACTION? (how they actually take — rent, fees, wages withheld, debt)
Signature HYPOCRISY? (the gap between 1 and 2)

The best epithet lives in that gap. Bounderby’s whole comedy is the gap between “self-made man” (pretension) and “fabricated his own hardship myth” (truth). The muckrakers worked the same way: Tarbell didn’t call Rockefeller names — she named the mechanism (“only the greed of power and money”) and let “the octopus” carry the verdict.

(b) Match the pattern to the feature

If the salient feature is…	Use pattern…	Because…
Inflated self-importance	P1 diminutive / P9 miniaturize	shrinks the ego directly
Grandiose titles/pretension	P2 mock-honorific / P3 ironic-self-claim	over-inflates till it pops
Extractive economics	P5 predation / P4 role-reduction	names the taking as taking
The gap between image and act	P8 allusion (Pecksniff, Bounderby)	one name = the whole hypocrisy
Purchased vanity	P6 vanity-deflation / P7 possession	the object indicts
Need for virality	P10 sound-stickiness	compression travels

(c) Test for stickiness — why “Shrub” lives and paragraphs die

A coinage survives if it passes the SHARP test:

Short — one to three syllables. “Shrub” = 1. “Vampire squid” = 3.
Heard-not-explained — lands without a footnote. If you must explain it, it’s dead.
Attacks-on-contact — the diminishment happens in the word itself, before any argument.
Rhythmic — it has a beat; you can say it twice fast. Alliteration and rhyme are mnemonic glue.
Punches-up — names a CHOICE (power, greed, vanity-as-purchase), never a birth trait.

Run any candidate through SHARP. “Little Marco” and “vampire squid” pass all five. “The man whose business practices reflect a troubling disregard for stakeholders” fails every one. Note Mencken’s verdict on what makes invective land: it must be “skillful and witty, as befits free and dignified people” — wit is the difference between a spear and a tantrum.

(d) Vary tags across a single piece (never repeat one label)

In a 600-word column, rotate so the same target gets hit from different angles — the reader feels relentlessness, not repetition. Rotate on TWO axes:

Rotate the ATTACK tag: open on pretension, pivot to extraction, land on hypocrisy. (Tell the moral story: he claims X, he does Y, therefore Z.)
Rotate the PATTERN: if you opened with an allusion (P8 “a Gradgrind”), don’t allude again — switch to role-reduction (P4 “this rent-collector”), then sound-stickiness (P10 “the buyback baron”).

Worked rotation (one target — the union-busting “philanthropist”):

Opens as His Munificence (P2 / hypocrisy) → revealed as the layoff laureate (P10 / cruelty) → diagnosed as a Bounderby in a fleece vest (P8 / mediocrity-as-genius) → dismissed as the rent-collector who funds a museum wing (P4 / extraction).

Four hits, four patterns, four attack-tags, zero repetition.

PART 4 — THE COMPACT CHEAT SHEET (riff on the fly)

THE GENERATOR GRID

FEATURE (spot it)	PATTERN (pick it)	SLOT-AND-FILL TEMPLATE	EXAMPLE FILL
Thinks he’s a genius	P1 / P9	”the [shrink-word] [genius-claim]“	the dime-store visionary
Loves grand titles	P2	”His [virtue]ness” / “the [Honorific] of [grubby thing]“	His Munificence; the Sun King of Software
Uses brochure words	P3	return their word + acid context	our Job Creator (jobs: 3, shelters: 9)
Romanticizes his function	P4	”the [demeaning function]“	the ad salesman; the toll-booth operator
Extracts / drains	P5	”[predator] of [the drained]“	the vulture fund of dying towns
Bought his looks	P6	”the [purchased-vanity] [title]“	the spray-tan Sun King
Famous for one purchase	P7	”the [embarrassing object] guy”	the eleven-minute astronaut
Is a walking morality tale	P8	”a [Mammon/Croesus/Gradgrind/Pecksniff] with a [modern prop]“	a Gradgrind with a spreadsheet
Proud of a small thing	P9	”his [little/toy] [proud-thing]“	his toy rockets
Needs to go viral	P10	compress / alliterate / rhyme / portmanteau	buyback baron; grift-shifter

THE ARCHETYPE → EPITHET QUICK TABLE

ARCHETYPE	READY EPITHETS (mix freely)
The tech mogul	the Disruptor; His Disruptiveness; the ad salesman; enshittifier-in-chief; the little app’s landlord; techno-feudalist
The slumlord	the landlord-in-chief; the rent-wraith; Dives at the gate; the eviction clerk; the absentee lord
The war profiteer	Crassus with a contract; the carrion-king; Moloch’s quartermaster; the blood-ledger baron
The union-buster	the Pinkerton in a fleece vest; layoff laureate; Bounderby; the scab-herder
The mediocrity-as-genius	Shrub; the failson; Babbitt; the dime-store visionary; profit-prophet; the gilded impostor
The landlord baron	the toll-troll; the meter-maid of the commons; the company store
The monopolist	the octopus; the strangler fig; the Sun King of [sector]; the trust
The courtier-pundit	the concierge to power; quarterly Quisling; goose-stepper; the bag man
The philanthro-capitalist	His Munificence; Davos Man; the offshore oracle; the private-island ecologist
The financier	vampire squid; the croupier; bankster; Masters-of-the-Universe; the buyback baron
The monument-builder	the Mausoleum guy; Citizen Kane; the Colossus of his own ego

THE FOUR-BEAT COLUMN OPENER (drop-in structure)

“[ALLUSION, P8] — [the target-archetype] — would have us call him a [THEIR SELF-CLAIM, P3]. The truth wears a smaller hat. He is [ROLE-REDUCTION, P4], a [PREDATION or SOUND-STICK, P5/P10], and the [POSSESSION, P7] in the driveway is the only manifesto he ever wrote.”

THE ONE RULE ABOVE ALL

Before you fire, ask: does this hit the wielding of power, or the accident of birth? If power — fire. If birth — holster it. That line is what keeps the voice the honest spear, and not its enemy’s mirror.

APPENDIX — PROVENANCE NOTES & RELIABILITY FLAGS

Solidly attributed (named coiner + year): fat cat (Frank R. Kent, 1928) · limousine liberal (Mario Procaccino, 1969) · disaster capitalism / shock doctrine (Naomi Klein, 2007) · malefactors of great wealth (T. Roosevelt, Aug. 20, 1907) · economic royalists (FDR/Stanley High, June 27, 1936) · Masters of the Universe (Tom Wolfe, 1987) · enshittification (Cory Doctorow, Nov. 2022) · Shrub / Governor Goodhair (Molly Ivins) · vampire squid (Matt Taibbi, 2009) · booboisie (Mencken, 1922) · conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1899).
Popularizer ≠ original coiner (flagged): bankster — Ferdinand Pecora’s 1932–34 hearings popularized it, but the word appeared in the press earlier. Robber baron — earliest use anonymous (Atlantic Monthly, 1870); Matthew Josephson’s 1934 book only popularized it.
Collective / contested origin: the 1% / “We are the 99%” — Occupy Wall Street (2011) for the slogan; Stiglitz’s May 2011 Vanity Fair essay for the “1%” framing; underlying data work belongs to economists Piketty, Saez, and Wolff.
No single documented coiner (weakest sourcing): vulture capitalist / vulture fund — generic 1980s financial-journalism origin, associated with raiders like Carl Icahn but with no authoritative attribution.
Re-aiming required: booboisie and smuthound (Mencken) and much Roman/Augustan invective were originally aimed sideways or down (at “the masses,” at women, at ethnicity). They are included here ONLY with the disqualifying targets stripped and the mechanic re-aimed UP at the powerful, per the Hard Guardrail.

The Invective Arsenal — A Generative Grammar of Contempt