eggcorn: "profound" (profane) words

[Jonathan Lighter]

Another interesting question is when and why "bitch" came to be mostly avoided, even in the doggie sense.

  In living memory a truly contemptuous phrase for a male lowlife, sometimes with distinct suggestions of sexual promiscuity, was "dirty dog."  Don't laugh, whippersnappers.  My grandmother used to say it and when she did, boy, did she mean it!

  OED has "dog" from ca1325, so it had a pretty long run. "Hound" was similarly used, as in Kipling's "Danny Deever."  I've never heard it used spontaneously, however.  OED has this sense of "hound" from ca1000.  Medieval dudes and dudettes got just as mad as we do, but/and (hard to say which) these were among the hardest words they had for people.

  JL






"Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Baker, John"
Subject: Re: eggcorn: "profound" (profane) words
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Women have told me that "cunt" is quintessentially offensive when a man =
is fighting with his girlfriend and calls her that. I think this is =
partly because "cunt" reduces the woman to her sexuality. There is no =
similar term reducing men to their sexuality. Even "gigolo," the =
closest term I can think of, doesn't come that close. Cunt combines the =
opprobrium that our language attaches to sexually active women (whether =
or not the woman is actually sexually active) - compare "slut" for a =
sexually active woman and "player" for a sexually active man - with the =
implication that there is no other aspect of her worth mentioning.
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Note that "cunt," "prick," and "bitch," when used in their literal =
senses, are alike in that they are not necessarily offensive, though the =
first two, and in America even the third, tend to be avoided.
=20
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John Baker
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