[Ads-l] Possible Antedating of "Bulldyke" (CORRECTED EMAIL, PLEASE DISREGARD PREVIOUS EMAIL)

[dave@wilton.net]

Neal is confirmed to be male here (or if a lesbian passing as male, they were incredibly successful at it):
 
"Celestial and Negro Quarrel." Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 26 May 1896, 8/6. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers.
 
"Harvey Neal, colored, and Chin Wy, of Celestial extraction, were the participants in a brawl at Polk and Clark streets Sunday night. The trouble arose from a statement made by the Chinaman, who branded Neal as a backslider
 
"Some time ago the two men were engaged in the hop joint business."
 
As I mentioned in the Wordorigins.org article, it's plausible that "bulldyke" started out as an epithet for a powerful man and later transferred to lesbians who had traditionally masculine characteristics and gender roles.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Shapiro, Fred" <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2025 3:00pm
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Subject: [ADS-L] Possible Antedating of "Bulldyke" (CORRECTED EMAIL, PLEASE DISREGARD PREVIOUS EMAIL)



Over 40 years ago, I contributed to the OED a citation for the word "bulldyker" from a 1906 medical text. That is now the earliest OED cite for any of the bulldyke / dyke family of words. Here is a possible antedating of "bulldyke" (OED 1931):

1892 Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago) 28 July 8/2 (GenealogyBank) Hattie Washinging [typo for "Washington"], a colored woman, started out at 6:30 o'clock yesterday afternoon with a big revolver in her hand. She went to Blanche Alexander's place on Custom House place in search of Belle Watkins, who, she said, had won the affections of Harvey Neal, alias "Bulldyke."

There is no clue about how Neal got the nickname, and there is no later evidence bearing on whether that nickname was an etymon of the term "bulldyke" referring to lesbianism. Curiously, the Daily Inter Ocean article appeared right next to an article about Alice Mitchell's murder of Freda Ward, the incident that first brought widespread attention to lesbianism. The mysterious 1892 use of "bulldyke" is discussed in the OED, in Green's Dictionary of Slang, and in an outstanding article by Dave Wilton in his Wordorigins.org website. The OED has an etymological note asserting that Harvey Neal was "a person who is confirmed to be male in another part of the story," but I don't see where in the newspaper Neal's maleness is confirmed. Is it possible that Neal was a lesbian woman "passing" as a male? It is clear that Washington and Neal were Blacks. The OED's earliest citations for "bulldyke" and related words, in the 1920s and 1930s, are also from African American contexts.

Fred Shapiro

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