Hashishu – hashishin
Haxxej doesn’t have the same structure

Oh, I don’t think it’s a hypothesis, H. P. I think it’s fact.

They were called ‘hashishin’ because it meant ‘hashish-eaters’ – it was a slander (or perhaps fact) perpetrated on them.

The Maltese ‘hashish’ used for grass and other vegetation is the same word – hence haxixu.

Haxixu comes from the noun for ‘grass/vegetation’ (as in hash) and not from the verb ‘tahxi’.

Malta was still part of the Islamic/Arabic world in the 11th century, the time of the Hashishin.

In other words, the Maltese word that originally meant ‘assassin’ comes from the word for grass and not from the verb ‘to screw over’, and unlike English, where the word ‘assassin’ has lost its original meaning and more or less means murderer, in Maltese it has kept the original meaning of a scheming and underhand person.

Interesting, this “assassin” hypothesis. I’m not entirely convinced, because then there’s “ifotti”, and “fottere” in the Southern Italian dialects, means, literally, “to fuck”.

On why the younger hamalli never use the word in its non-sexual sense, I suspect there’s a sociological reason. The post-1980 generation have no sense of right or wrong and therefore do not need the vocab for moral condemnation.

Mahmug in the sense that you mean here: filthy
‘Il-fridge mahmug’ – the fridge is dirty

That’s why it’s used for coitus – the same as the British ‘get stuffed’.

(My parents used to flip when we said that as children, but never said why – I had to find out later.)

‘Dak haxixu – jahxi n-nies’ is, I believe, derived from a different word completely. I’ve always known haxixu to be the Arabic term for the Hizari Ismailis, which gave English (and other European languages) the word ‘assassin’ – which, ironically, Maltese later reimported via Italian as ‘assassin(o)’.

And that’s why ‘haxixu’ isn’t used by ‘hamalli’ – no more than assassin is used by people in council houses in Greater Manchester.

But now I am wondering why so many words which should be negative and unflattering have acquired an element of ”kapaci ghax jirnexxielu , ghax jasal, ghax jilhaqlu, ghax rebah” while we seem not to have the tools to describe a totally negative description of a person’s deeds.

Well said.