#BITCH USE YOUR WORDS FULL#

Behavioral researchers used Noldus Information Technology’s FaceReader to measure RBF and found just as many unconscious expressions of contempt in men. Are women trying so hard-smiling so brightly, glossing our lips and widening our eyes and composing an interested expression-that the minute we relax, all the contempt we have stifled slides across our faces?Īh, but wait. I tried to make myself like the word “crone,” knowing I was aging into it, but “resting bitch face” undid me. The only male name so privileged is a Chad, who is an attractive, confident, sexually active alpha male. A Karen, for example, is White, entitled, racist, and, yeah, bitchy. Ogilvie also noted that the latest set of pejoratives is female first names. Slang words for women outnumber slang words for crime, for drugs, for drinking, even for sex.

“There are more than 3,000 pejorative words for women in English slang.” Sarah Ogilvie, a linguist and lexicographer who directs the Dictionary Lab at the University of Oxford. It was downhill from there.Ī handful of language experts associated with the Oxford English Dictionary had great fun a few weeks ago at a discussion titled “‘Bitch,’ ‘bint,’ and ‘maid’: exploring sexist language in the dictionary.” “There are 1,500 words for vagina,” pointed out Dr. But by the fifteenth century, the word was applied to women who dared show intense sexual desire (like an unleashed bitch in heat). The Old English bicce was the word for a female dog and was probably used as casually as dog-show people use it today. You can feel the affection in the exclamation, made in 1896, “Oh great-hearted sweet bitch Emily Bronte.” In 1785, “to stand bitch” merely meant to make tea or perform a female role. Or rather, the behavior always repelled, but the word was softer. We all step back, eager to avoid Mom’s wrath.Īpparently it was not always thus.

Permanent, full-time bitchiness repels anyone in its vicinity.

#BITCH USE YOUR WORDS FULL#

“Does it say bitchy, Ray?” she retorts, knowing full well what drove him to the pharmacy. Not the kind suggested on Everybody Loves Raymond, after Ray finds Debra a PMS remedy and triumphantly lists the symptoms it relieves. That is the kind of bitch I would like to be. “Pola Oloixarac is a bitch,” writes Adam Morris in The Point, explaining, “While a satirist endeavors to reveal that the emperor has no clothes, a bitch will point out when he is very badly dressed.” “Queer” is by now so amicable, it would make lousy ammo for a sniper. Even partial success means there is one less insult in our vocabulary (at least until someone invents a new one, see below). But directed at one woman, the word still trails its old sense: snarling meanness, and before that, a dog crazed with lust.Ĭan you ever fully reclaim a word? Some activists and social theorists say is dangerous even to try you will weaken your cause. The card relaxes my resistance applied to a group of women, “bitches” creates instant camaraderie, neutralizing all negative connotations. The casual use of “bitch,” with fondness or in teasing, has taken me some getting used to. I buy the card and leave it on the kitchen table for days, reconditioning myself. It is ALWAYS advisable to apply suitable non-offensive words (and you can ALWAYS find them), unless you have been offended first and have no recourse - For there continue to be people who only understand and respond to this type of discourse.“Namaste, bitches!” calls the blowsy, purple-clad yoga instructor on the greeting card, pulling all the sting from the word. To directly answer the question, ALL perjorative words like this are both strong and vulgar.

I am now waiting for online dictionaries (except for the Urban Dictionary which already reflects this) to conform to this reality. In it's usage to refer to males, it means that he is a coward. 'She's a bitch' now means that she 'bitches' too much, or complains too much. Of course the context in which it is used gives the intended meaning, but for the most part the long-standing verbal meaning has also become the nominal meaning. Bitch has been relegated to the meaning of a person who is difficult to get along with, in the sense that they complain incessantly. I am a native New Yorker (from Harlem) living in Brazil, and am having some difficulty explaining to my English students the subtle mutations through which English word meanings pass.īecause of the pervasive nature and influence of hip hop language in modern American youth culture, 'Bitch' as meaning a vulgar woman, a whore, a 'loose' woman, etc, has been replaced by the word 'Hoe'.

Bitch use your words