Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 8/7/07, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> 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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