Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution

[Jonathan Lighter]

Most recently, I heard "piss and moan" earlier this year.

  IIRC, Norman Mailer has it in _The Naked and the Dead_.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution
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Does anyone else recall when "bitch and moan" was "piss and moan"? Or
was the latter merely a local St. Louis usage?

-Wilson

On 8/7/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Re: Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 8/7/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > Are you referring only to law cases? "Bitch", noun, in the
> > perjorative sense dates from earlier than the 18th century (OED2).
> >
> > I happen to be on this word because I am tracking down a use of
> > "bitch" (verb) = grumble, complain from around 1775 -- OED2 has it as
> > 1930- (v.2, sense 3).
>
> Are your 18C attestations clearly in the 'grumble' sense, or could
> they possibly mean 'call someone a bitch', as in the 1709 OED cite,
> "In wonderful Rage went to Cursing and Bitching"?
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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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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