Albright College slang (1938) - bimb(o)

[Victor Steinbok]

I hope Wilson doesn't take this as criticism, but what's the probability
that this was a meaning reversal? Is it unlikely that [some of them]
heard the term applies to them and reversed it to apply to their
partners (I am going to ignore for the moment whether this might have
been an intentional reversal or just an innocent one).

You are a bimbo--NO, YOU are a bimbo!

     VS-)

On 3/10/2011 2:27 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net>  wrote:
>> For men:
>>
>> Â a. A fellow, chap; usu. contemptuous.
>>
>> 1919 Â  Â Amer. Mag. Nov. 69/1 Â  Nothing but the most heroic measures
>> will save the poor bimbo.
> I can't remember whether I've mentioned this little-known fact before.
> But, WTF? As everyone knows, I'd mention it again, anyway. :-)
>
> Anyhow, the German B-girls who worked the black, uh, *colored*
> GI-bars, back in the day, used "bimbo" - well, "Bimbo" - as their word
> for any random black GI or group thereof, there being no distinct
> plural form. It was also used as another word for _Mischling_
> "mulatto," as in:
>
> "Sie hat einen kleinen Bimbo"
>
> said of some friend of the speaker that had recently given birth.
>
> One of the girls told me - whispered to me, actually, for some reason
> -  that _Bimbolina_ was used for "black woman." But, since there were
> no black women around, I never heard that word used in the wild.
>
> _Bimbo_, except in the sentence quoted above, was used, IME, only as a
> very odd - to me; nobody else seemed to be bothered by it - form of
> greeting.
>
> One or more _Negerliebchen_ (IME, only a literary term) walk into a
> black Ami-Bar. All the girls shout with glee:
>
> "Bimbo!!!"
>
> The word was not used under any other circumstances.
>
> Now that I think about it, the word could very well have been
> _B[E]mbo_. I wouldn't have noticed the difference, especially since I
> was long since familiar with the English word, _bimbo_.
>
> --
> -Wilson

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