Is there a more satisfying sneer to toss at an opponent – and a more humiliating disparagement draped upon one’s shoulders – than the word “sook”?

It comes loaded with memories of torment from the skinned-knee schoolyards of the 1950s.

Used at the right moment and delivered with a curl of the lip, it is a word cruel enough to excite a chant among gangs of toadies wishing to win the approval of the chief harasser.

“Sook, sook, sook.”

It belittles the sniveller and mocks the whinger with terrifying accuracy.

Yet this short, wonderfully descriptive word has fallen scandalously out of favour in recent years, as if, somehow, it lacks sophistication or the practised cruelty of Paul Keating’s inventive invective. Could anything compete with the scorn Keating aimed at John Hewson: “a shiver looking for a spine to run up”.

Sticks and stones … Opposition Leader........

© Brisbane Times