eggcorn: "profound" (profane) words

[Charles Doyle]

And "mongrel" and "cur" . . . .

And (even more opprobriously for our grandmothers) "dirty lowdown dog"; might "lowdown" have been more vividly picturesque than we imagined? Who knows what our grandmothers, with all their taboos and repressions, might have imagined (or tried not to imagine) about things!

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 10:09:46 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>
>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

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