Members of the Architects' Collaborative cling on to modern art outside their Harvard Graduate Center, 1949. Gropius' feet are closest to the ground. (Source: Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect.)

We needed strong swear words, and so I wrote them down. We came up with ordure (fertilizer), fumier (shit), curé (priest)—they were all good, but the one which worked best to make Vladimir shut up was architecte. It seemed to us the worst insult that one could ever say.

Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography