Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution

[Wilson Gray]

Then there's "yellow dog" = "cur, sniveling coward" or "person of low
or unknown background or ancestry." Hence, "I'd vote for a yellow dog
as long as it was a Democrat."

According to a National Geographic special, when dogs are allowed to
interbreed completely promiscuously, they devolve into yellow-coated
curs with tails that curl over their backs and pointed or
partially-floppy ears.

I was disappointed. I expected that they would go back to being wolves. :-)

-Wilson


On 8/7/07, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >     Just wondering: What is it about a female dog that has made the
> > word "bitch" so offensive?  I sense a great injustice here.  Dogs
> > (both male and female), albeit with some exceptions, are wonderful animals.
>
> I think it's originally offensive because it means "low" and not
> because it means "evil". To be likened to a dog or a bitch is
> basically to be disrespected ... I think.
>
> Cf. "work like a dog" (although dogs don't work hard usually), "they
> treat me like a dog" (doesn't mean they pet me and take me to the
> vet), "died like dogs", etc. The idea is that the dog is low-class or
> ignoble (compared to the humans) ... I think.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
>
>
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--
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.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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