is "dirty blonde" depreciative?

[Eric Nielsen]

I remember it from my youth as a name for the darker shades of blonde. It's
used very frequently in Rob Thurman's urban fantasy series ("Nightlife",
"Moonshine", "Mashouse", etc. 2006-present) to describe the older of the
Leandros brothers--without a hint of the pejorative.

Eric

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 10:05 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: is "dirty blonde" depreciative?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Neutral
>
> On the basis of literature, I assumed "insult," just because it
> appeared that it should br=e such.. But, when I've heard that used in
> the wild, it has always been a merely a description, whether of the
> hair of the person speaking or that of the person spoken of.
>
> Maybe it's an insult in Britspeak.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> 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.
> -Mark Twain
>
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