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England has a surfeit of terms for obnoxious people.
I may have made those last two up.
God-botherer is fantastic, clearly god has better things to do than to keep hearing their complaints.
Not a native speaker. To me it sounds the other way around, like it's God who's constantly bothering them? Can it be read both ways?
It depends on if the subject of the sentence (the person) is doing the thing (being active) or having the thing done to them (being passive). Think like this:
A helper (help-ER) is someone who is helping/doing the help. A caller (call-ER) is calling someone else. A botherer (bother-ER) is someone who is doing the bothering.
Someone who is recieving bother is being bothered (bother-ED), one who is getting help is being helped (help-ED), or getting calls is being called (call-ED).
God-botherer is someone who is god-bothering (bothering god). God-bothered is someone being bothered by god.
That's the correct way of reading the structure of the word, but as always with english, there's how it's written, and how it's meant.
Almost universally, this is meant as someone who is bothering people about god, like jehova's whiteness knocking on your door, or wandering mormons inviting you to their church.
Of course. I was focusing on the doing or recieving part and completely missed the second part: Are you a botherer and bothered OF/BY or ABOUT god?
It can be either one, so I'd say it depends on how religious and/or deranged the speaker is. Like you said - most would say it's about god, while I was deranged enough to interpret it as being a direct communication with a god.
Also, your literal interpretation is much funnier - bothering god reminds me the Bruce Almighty scene with all the emails and post-its coming from the same person
Think of it like 'motherfucker'. No one is calling people mothers and accusing them of fucking. I do like your interpretation though. If that hasn't been the premise for a movie or TV show then it probably should be.
Por que no los dos?