Link to NY City Council "Bitch & Ho" Resolution

[Landau, James]

Try again.  Hopefully this time my message will be readable:

Someone I can't identify posed this question:

> Just wondering: What is it about a female dog that has made the
> word "bitch" so offensive? I sense a great injustice here.

According to an otherwise long-forgotten book I once read, in a number
of cultures including many in Continental Europe, dogs are despised
because they eat corpses on a battlefield. However in the Anglo-Saxon
culture the dog is looked on favorably, e.g. "Man's best friend". Hence
English speakers were unable to use "dog" as a curse-word and therefore
settled on "bitch".

I will leave it to the judgment of the ADS List whether the above is
plausible.

The Jewish Encyclopedia (article on "Dog", on-line at
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=415&letter=D) has the
following, which may be relevant here:

The dog referred to in the Bible is the semisavage species seen
throughout the East, held in contempt for its fierce, unsympathetic
habits, and not yet recognized for his nobler qualities as the faithful
companion of man. He is used chiefly by shepherds or farmers to watch
their sheep or their houses and tents, and to warn them by his loud
barking of any possible danger (Job xxx. 1; Isa. lvi. 10). He lives in
the streets, where he acts as scavenger, feeding on animal flesh unfit
for man, and often devouring even human bodies (Ex. xxii. 31; I Kings
xiv. 11, xvi. 4, xxi. 23; II Kings ix. 10, 36; Jer. xv. 3). At night he
wanders in troops from place to place, filling the air with the noise of
his barking (Ps. lix. 7-14; compare Ex. xi. 7), and it is dangerous to
seize him by the car in order to stop him (Prov. xxvi. 17). He is of a
fierce disposition (Isa. lvi. 11; A. V. "greedy")and therefore the type
of violent men (Ps. xxii. 17 [A. V. 16], 21 [20]). Treacherous and
filthy (Prov. xxvi. 11), his name is used as a term of reproach and
self-humiliation in such expressions as: "What is thy servant, which is
but a dog" (II Kings viii. 13, R. V.); or "Am I a dog's head?" (II Sam.
iii. 8); or "After whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog?" (I Sam.
xxiv. 15 [A. V. 14]; compare II Sam. ix. 8, xvi. 9; Cheyne's emendation
in "Encyc. Bibl." s.v. "Dog," seems unnecessary).

The dog known to the Hebrews in Biblical times was the so-called pariah
dog, the shepherd-dog (Job xxx. 7) being the more ferocious species. The
Assyrian hunter's dog was probably unknown. The A. V. translation of
____ ("well girt in the loins") in Prov. xxx. 31 by "greyhound" is
incorrect; R. V. (margin) has more correctly "war-horse" (see
commentaries ad loc.).

The dog being an unclean animal, "the breaking of a dog's neck,"
mentioned as a sacrificial rite in Isa. lxvi. 3 (compare Ex. xiii. 13),
indicates an ancient Canaanite practise (see W. R. Smith, "Rel. of Sem."
p. 273). The shamelessness of the dog in regard to sexual life gave rise
to the name ___("dog") for the class of priests in the service of
Astarte who practised sodomy ("kedeshim," called also by the Greeks ___,
Deut. xxiii. 19 [A. V. 18]; compare ib. 18 [17] and Rev. xxii. 15; see
Driver ad loc.), though ___as the regular name of priests attached to
the temple of Ashtoret at Larnaca has been found on the monuments (see
"C. I. S." i., No. 86).

     ["___" for Hebrew and Greek in the original]

OT: I agre with Wilson Gray on "Pepsi-Cola".  I was under the impression
it got its name because it was originally marketed as a stomach remedy.
By this derivation "Pepsi-Cola" is an interesting blend of Greek
"pepsis:" <- "pessein" and Malinke "kolo"

James A. Landau
test engineer
Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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