Jessica Sutich

In my last post a question was raised about the offensive or non-offensive quality of certain slang words and their origin. Now, I think that word origins are fun for everyone, but I know that is not always true so I am doing this post separately. Also, I am going to use those words again that make some people nervous. If they make you nervous then don’t read this!

The question referenced the words, “cunt”, “dyke” and “nigger”. I will tell you right now, that I can’t speak to the final word. I’m a white, middle-class kid from New Jersey. I can barely type it without apologizing. The other two though, let’s go. I’m fearless.

The internet is a great place to look for information. It is like the bible, for every thing you read on one page there is another page that says something completely different and three people who read the same thing but interpret it six different ways. I like that as a pathway to knowledge. You wander so far away and yet always seem to end up where you started.

I first looked up the word orgin of “dyke” and the first thing that came up traced it possibly to a Celtic Queen named Boudicca who organized a revolt against the Roman Empire. The best part of this finding though is that the site says, “dyke has been reclaimed by some lesbians. Even today, even at Vassar, said in a hurtful manner, it can be a painful word.” Yes folks, even at Vassar. Even there.

So this Boudicca (Boo! Dyke! Ah!) was a fierce red head with spears and terror and all kinds of vim and vigor. So she would make a great story. But I then found another site that said that it is unlikely that the word comes form the Celtic Queen. Bye-bye Boo Dyke.

Another site said that it might originate from the French word for men’s clothing, “dike”, used by British Newspapers in 1710 for cross-dressing pirates. The pirates were Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. There is a suitably pirate-like account of their story here. Also at the end of the story the book, “Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition”, by Barry R. Burg, is cited. I think we all would like to read that. So that seems to be the first time you can find the word in reference to tough women who may or may not be sleeping with each other and wear pants—at least for work.

The OED traces the word to the 1920s. The terms “dyke” and “bulldyker” were traced to novels from the Harlem Renaissance. So if the pirates led to the origin of the word then the usage of it was fairly quiet until the 1920s. The OED says that bulldyker may come from a variant of hemaphrodite, “morphadike”. I love that word and would like to popularize it. It combines a feeling of superpowers with the general humor of people not being able to understand each other. “What was that you said? Your cousin is a morphadike? I’ve heard of that, it’s similar to Amish, yes?”

I also found a reference to the Greek goddess of Justice, Dike. Daughter of Zeus punisher of unjust men. There is no trace of word origin here but there is definitely a good story and a possible market for an alternative shoe brand.

Now for the “C” word. Why can Irish people say it and it doesn’t sound as offensive?

I really wanted to find out that it traced back to the same roots as the word country. Once upon a time, when I was in college, I was speaking to some guy about fraternities. I said, “what frat are you in?” He had apparently drank the kool-aid at his all boy drinking club (only requirement to get in is to do homo-erotic things with one another in the name of kinship) because he said, “Don’t call my fraternity a FRAT. Would you call your country a CUNT?” I called him one and we didn’t become friends. I was always hopeful though that the word origins were the same so that with the use of time machines I would be able to go back and have a much more intelligent come back. It probably didn’t deserve one.

Alas, the poor hoo-hah. We throw about more words for men’s junk than I can count but none are quite as taboo as this. I found several references to a street in Medieval London called Gropecunt Lane which perhaps was a place for prostitutes tracing back to the practice of naming streets for what business or function it was known for. “I’m off wife, first to Chopacow Alley, then Seriouslackofunderstandingofbiology Row to have my humours balanced, and then off to Gropecunt Lane.”

The word may have its root from the Germanic word “kunton” meaning female genitalia. It also may not. Either way, we have been using it since the 13th century and it hasn’t always been considered as offensive. In Chaucer’s time it was just bawdy, not offensive. It was also spelled queynte. In a delightful twist this word was seemingly interchangeable with the modern day “quaint” and possible that the words were not thought to be distinct. I suggest that every time you hear someone call something quaint from now on, you substitute in your mind, the word cunt. It’s a great game. Further searching found that one meaning of quaint is “a many layered folded-in mystery.” This was from www.sex-lexis.com in the Sex Dictionary though, so take your quaint with a grain of salt.

I am not quite sure when it became so offensive in the U.S. but Wikipedia says this, “While Francis Grose‘s 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as “C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing”,^[19] it did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961…” I would personally rate the years between 1795 and 1961 as the years in which we, as a society, were the most frightened of vaginas, so that makes sense. I would also rate Francis as seriously pent-up. Then you know, the Beatles, the sixties, sexual freedom, Eve Ensler… Things have gotten better but I still wouldn’t say it in polite company. Use instead, the more socially acceptable “quaint”.