In her book Bitch: The Journey of a Word (2024) Karen Stollznow explores the development of the English word ‘bitch’ and the many meanings and implications it has borne over time.
The earliest meaning is one the word still holds today: female dog. In that sense, the word bitch dates back to about 1000 years ago. Over time, the term also came to be used for female foxes, wolves, bears, seals, and other animals.
The term ‘dog’ was used as an insult before ‘bitch’ ever was: in fact, ‘dog’ was used to put people down back in ancient Greece and Rome, making it almost inevitable that ‘bitch’ would eventually become an insult too. By the middle ages, ‘bitch’ was being used as a euphemism for ‘prostitute’ and in general to infer that women were sexually promiscuous. By the late 19th century, ‘bitch’ had become the rudest thing anyone could say about a woman; so rude it wasn’t even proper to mention the word directly.
By the early twentieth century ‘bitch’ was often being levelled at women seeking equal rights, such as the right to vote, and by the 1960s, amid second-wave feminism, there were efforts to reclaim the word, with some feminist writers arguing that calling a woman ‘bitch’ implied that she was confident and strong-minded; qualities that some men feared in women.
But ‘bitch’ also had a hidden life in certain circles: in the language of jazz a ‘bitch’ was a talented, cool musician. And today, while ‘bitch’ is usually uttered, and interpreted, as a straightforward insult, in some contexts variations like ‘beeatch’ are used in an almost complimentary sense, to denote someone as sassy and confident.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-white-long-coated-small-dog-on-green-grass-during-daytime-NS2-zjhcX74
