Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution

[Jonathan Lighter]

And let's keep in mind the fact that figurative"bitch" can be essentially synonymous with literal "whore."  OED/HDAS has this since, er, Hector was a pup.

   jJL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution
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On the contrary, I take Fielding's satiric joke to be based on the fact that "whore" is obviously a MORE offensive epithet than "bitch"--a joke about foolish and pretentious notions and practices of decorum.

Is it possible that Grose's entry is based on his misunderstood of Fielding satire?

The "regular Billinsgate or St. Giles's answer--'I may be a
whore, but can't be a bitch'" seems to play on the difference between "whore" as literal (therefore true) and "bitch" as figurative (therefore untrue, impossible).

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 16:34:25 -0400
>From: Benjamin Zimmer
>Subject: Re: Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution
>
>On 8/7/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>
>> Do y'all remember the sad and hilarious moment in _Joseph Andrews_ (1742) at which Mrs. Tow-Wouse addresses Betty the servant-maid? "'Get out of my house, you Whore.' To which, she added another Name, which we do not care to stain our Paper with.--It was a monosyllable, beginning with a B---, and indeed was the same, as if she had pronounced the Words, _She-Dog_. Which Term, we shall, to avoid Offence, use on this Occasion, tho' indeed both the Mistress and Maid uttered the above-mentioned B---, a Word extremely disgustful to Females of the lower sort" (bk. 1, chapt. 17). The squabble continues for most of a page, with the term "She-Dog" occurring in profusion.

>
>Which fits with what the Grose entry has...
>
>BITCH. A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation
> that can be given to an English woman, even more
> provoking than that of whore, as may he gathered from the
> regular Billinsgate or St. Giles's answer--"I may be a
> whore, but can't be a bitch."
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer

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