English apart, my knowledge of Indian languages could be written on a postage stamp. But this month I’ve learned my first words of Urdu. They mean idiot. Two linked words, to be exact. The first transcribes as ijaz, the second as butt. The pair, I’m told, can be followed, for clarity’s sake, with a phrase which I will not transcribe but translate: chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Oddly, I owe this widening of my linguistic skills to the very holder of that distinguished post. It seemed — I’m no sports-news addict — that he had accused some England cricketers of taking huge bribes to lose a match against his own countrymen. So the BBC was interviewing him. Well, trying to. Whether the charge was true, or even quarter-true, who am I to say? I have no personal knowledge of the issue whatsoever. That, I suspect, was precisely as much knowledge as the Pakistani gentleman had. If he had more, he was not going to tell the BBC.

Repeatedly and determinedly, its radio reporter asked him what proof he had. In vain. With equal determination, but more success, the gentleman — let us call him Ijaz Butt — overrode all questions, ranting and rambling on instead about a wicked conspiracy of slander aimed at his own cricketers.

At that point it struck me that Mr Butt was well named. If you want to accuse people of taking bribes, it’s wise — especially if your listeners’ prejudices will be the reverse of yours — to offer some evidence. Not to do so might suggest, to cynical minds, that you had none. And that was just what he achieved.

True, he did later aver that he’d merely been recounting the common gossip of those who take bets on sport. Too late. The cynics merely wondered how a cricket-board chairman was so in touch with the table-talk of the betting fraternity, let alone trusted it enough to repeat it. The damage to his credibility was already done — single-handed, by himself.

What an idiot, I thought, what other word could I use? And then I realized: umpteen. For English is thick with them. Many are slang, though idiot itself comes straight from an ancient-Greek word meaning of one’s own, as in idiosyncrasy, and was once widely used for the mentally disordered. So too was lunatic, from the Latin for the moon, as in moonstruck. But the rest are a sorry bunch of insults.

Here are some. Ass; blockhead, bonehead, fathead, thickhead and (recently) airhead; buffoon (imported, via Italian, from the Latin for toad); clot; clown; cretin (which, strangely, began as a Swiss-French word for Christians, kindly but simple-minded folk); dimwit, halfwit and nitwit; dolt (now old-fashioned); fool; imbecile; loony; moron (more Greek, and used mainly by the over-educated); nincompoop (source unknown, though sundry implausible ones are on offer); ninny (which probably isn’t nincompoop writ short, though the name Innocent, claimed by some as its source, is even less probable); numbskull; nut, nutcase and nutter; simpleton; twerp; and — that’s enough—-twit. And then there are self-standing adjectives: absurd; barmy; bonkers; brain-dead; brainless; crazy; daft; dumb; gormless; potty; silly; stupid; thick-witted. And more; I cite only words that I myself have used, from my schooldays to old age, omitting Americanisms, some modern slang and such antiques as dunderhead. No doubt our ancestors had others: I came upon flat in a down-market novel of the 1820s that I bought some years ago. And, alas, I don’t know what teenagers may be using this week. I offer these ruderies with no unkind intent, merely to widen vocabulary. It’s a long list, longer even than the one of synonyms for nonsense that I offered here some months ago. Mockery is a universal habit, but English does seem unusually rich in ways of expressing it. Or maybe Urdu has as many? I must learn some.