Albright College slang (1938) - bimb(o)

[Dan Goncharoff]

Where was it that you heard the girls saying "bimbo"?

I ask because in Hessen the local term for the jug used to serve Apfelwein
is "Bembel".

I could see the word becoming a local equivalent of "jughead", but have no
support for this.

DanG

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Albright College slang (1938) - bimb(o)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > For men:
> >
> > Â a. A fellow, chap; usu. contemptuous.
> >
> > 1919 Â  Â Amer. Mag. Nov. 69/1 Â  Nothing but the most heroic measures
> > will save the poor bimbo.
> >
>
> I can't remember whether I've mentioned this little-known fact before.
> But, WTF? As everyone knows, I'd mention it again, anyway. :-)
>
> Anyhow, the German B-girls who worked the black, uh, *colored*
> GI-bars, back in the day, used "bimbo" - well, "Bimbo" - as their word
> for any random black GI or group thereof, there being no distinct
> plural form. It was also used as another word for _Mischling_
> "mulatto," as in:
>
> "Sie hat einen kleinen Bimbo"
>
> said of some friend of the speaker that had recently given birth.
>
> One of the girls told me - whispered to me, actually, for some reason
> -  that _Bimbolina_ was used for "black woman." But, since there were
> no black women around, I never heard that word used in the wild.
>
> _Bimbo_, except in the sentence quoted above, was used, IME, only as a
> very odd - to me; nobody else seemed to be bothered by it - form of
> greeting.
>
> One or more _Negerliebchen_ (IME, only a literary term) walk into a
> black Ami-Bar. All the girls shout with glee:
>
> "Bimbo!!!"
>
> The word was not used under any other circumstances.
>
> Now that I think about it, the word could very well have been
> _B[E]mbo_. I wouldn't have noticed the difference, especially since I
> was long since familiar with the English word, _bimbo_.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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