The word "gibe" is correct in written English.
It is used to refer to a taunt or a mocking remark. Example: "His gibe about her performance was uncalled for and hurtful." Alternatives include "taunt" or "sneer."
But I suspect it was simply an insult, perhaps in retaliation for Miliband's mild earlier gibe at Paxman's importance.
"First finding from Omid: earth is round!" read the lighthearted gibe at what many Iranians stubbornly bemoan as the provincial backwardness of their rulers.
Britain can help other non-euro countries who gibe at the new treaty's strictures as well as euro-zone countries that want to resist protectionism or over-regulation including Germany.
Last, China's government is already more efficient than the decadent West (mostly rubbish, see next section).Fact or fiction?For all the insults hurled at "Disneyland with the death penalty" (to use William Gibson's gibe), Singapore provides better schools and hospitals and safer streets than most Western countries and all with a state that consumes only 19% of GDP.
Its spokesman declared on January 8th that ISIS fighters were "hungry lions who drink blood and eat bones, finding nothing tastier than the blood of Sahwa", a gibe that is particularly insulting to other jihadist groups.A successful containment of ISIS would drastically change the dynamic in both Syria and Iraq.
He will not be humiliated in public, nor immortalised by a poet as he "who made from cowardice the great refusal" (a gibe that Dante in the 14th century seemingly threw at Celestine).
Because he had never run a union, or even done time on the picket line, he was liable to the gibe "office boy" whenever the AFL-CIO lost a lobbying effort in Congress.
How many more times can Americans hear the phrase "Yes we can" without wondering whether they really want to? George Will, a conservative columnist, notes that Disraeli's gibe about Gladstone might well apply to Mr Obama he is "inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity .Mr Obama may be ill-served by his hallelujah corner in the press.
The sailors subsequently had to start eating each other to survive, a twist that no doubt would have tickled the whales.As a final gibe, anti-whalers accuse whaling countries of cowardly deception, by conducting their whaling under the cover of "scientific research".
One of Mr Clarke's allies predicted gloomily that, although Mr Hague presents himself as a tough leader, the prospect was for a continuation of Mr Major's much-criticised fudge and mudge.That gibe pinpoints the principal task now facing Mr Hague.
So too will a gibe at less-than-perfect Western leaders such as Silvio Berlusconi.
