Biography of a Word Project - "Bitch"

3:03 PM Michael Cotter 0 Comments

Timeline:

c1000 - (n.) word was first used as "a female dog"

1400 - (n.) Applied opprobriously to a woman; strictly, a lewd or sensual woman. Not now in decent use; but formerly common in literature.

1500 - (n.) Applied to a man but less opprobriously than to women (more lighthearted)

1555 - (n.) "female of the fox, wolf, and occasionally of other beasts; usually in combination with the name of the species"

1645 - (v.) word transfers meaning from noun to verb (Charles Cotton: "thou art now going a bitching")

1747 - (n.) a term used in mining for a tool used to draw up the rods

1777 - (v.) To hang back or idle behind ("Norton bitched a little at last" Edmund Burke "The Correspondence of Edmund Burke")

1823 - (v.) to spoil, bungle, or ruin  

1904 - (n.) A primitive for of lighting - old fat candle (ie: "The Black Flame Candle" in Hocus Pocus)

1930 - (v.) to grumble or complain (accepted into American English terminology in 1930 but not published in this context until Budd Schulberg's 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run?)

1934 - (v.) to be spiteful, malicious, deceptive

Compounds:

1330 - Bitch-Son - (n.) from Arthur & Merlin meaning, along the lines of the modern, son of a bitch ("Biche sone! thou drawest amis.")

1796 - Bitch-fou - (n.) from Robert Burns meaning drunk and sick as a bitch; beastly drunk; wasted ("I've been..bitch fou 'mang godly priests.")