Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

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slut's-hole". Oxford English Dictionary (Onlineed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.) c. 1400, slutte, "a dirty, slovenly, careless, or untidy woman," first attested in the Coventry mystery plays. It is paired alliteratively with sloven (q.v.), which also first appears there, and both might suggest "lewd, lascivious woman" but this is uncertain. The second definition is “a woman of a low or loose character; a bold or impudent girl; a hussy, jade.” But if you read the citations under this definition, the sexual aspect isn’t entirely clear. For instance, in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1651), Sir Thomas Burton refers to “a peevish drunken flurt, a waspish choleric slut.” Not a compliment, obviously, but it’s not clear whether he’s insulting her character or her housekeeping. When I tell you that this was one of the most mind blowing and interesting books I have read in a long time, I’m not even exaggerating. I could not stop regurgitating information I learned from this book to everyone around me while I was reading it - I was just so fascinated by what I was learning.

idle vagrant, sturdy beggar, one of the vagabond class," a word of shadowy origin, perhaps a shortened form of roger (with a hard -g-), thieves' slang for a begging vagabond who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge, which is perhaps an agent noun in English from Latin rogare"to ask." Another theory [Klein] traces it to Celtic (compare Breton rog"haughty"); OED says, "There is no evidence of connexion with F. rogue'arrogant'" (the theory supported in Century Dictionary). Greer, Germaine (12 May 2011). "These 'slut walk' women are simply fighting for their right to be dirty". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. I stress to even write a review for fear of disappointing the recommender (a word??) of this book— one of my most beloved friends and esteemed colleagues, Sydney Arvanitas. However, I must be true to myself!!!Montell effortlessly moves between history, science, and popular culture to explore these questions—and how we can use the answers to affect real social change. Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but downright hilarious and profound. Wordslut gets to the heart of our language, marvels at its elasticity, and sheds much-needed light on the biases that shadow women in our culture and our consciousness. Critical Praise After scanning the database (British National Corpus), Cameron found that when people use female as a noun, as opposed to woman, it's often in explicitly negative contexts."

a b c d Julia Wood (2014). Gendered Lives. Cengage Learning. p.108. ISBN 978-1-285-07593-8 . Retrieved 4 December 2015. I’m interested in how word-usages evolve, such as with “stupid.” When the characters of Austen (and other 18th- and 19th- century writers) use it, they mean “dull” and not the (U.S. American) connotation “stupid” has today. And by “dull,” I don’t mean the usual way we think of that word, as in “boring.” The same kind of evolution (and worse) happened to words like “slut.” Discusses historical factors like exclusion, which I've always been interested in when I started noticing that women led language in writing because they were not allowed to formally study. See Tales of Genji and western vulgate writings where they were not taught Latin. slut". The Mavens' Word of the Day. Random House. 15 December 1997. Archived from the original on 16 June 2013.The OED’s first definition for slut is “a woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern.” The earliest citation for such usage is 1402, predating citations for either the F word or the C word. But again, slut then had no sexual connotation, so using it in print carried no onus. Soule, Richard (1900). Howison, George H. (ed.). A dictionary of English synonymes and synonymous or parallel expressions designed as a practical guide to aptness and variety of phraseology (revised and enlargeded.). Boston: Little, Brown. p.49. OCLC 7437533.

Montell sets a high bar … Just the kind of sharp, relevant scholarship needed to continue to inspire the next generation of feminist thought.’ — Kirkus I had no real idea what this book was about, I’d seen it briefly mentioned once before by a mutual on TikTok so when I saw it available on audiobook in my library - I snatched it up. The title of this book alone grabbed my attention, to be honest I didn’t need to know anything else about it before I jumped straight in. And what an immaculately chosen jump that was. Kudos, Amanda Montell (for I learned not to call you, Madam), for this insightful book that forced me to open my eyes and brain to new ways of comprehending language.The word slut is commonly interchanged with the words tramp, whore, hoe, nympho, and hooker. All of these words have a very negative connotation. Additional meanings and connotations of the term are negative and identify a slut as being a slovenly and ugly person, for example, as in these quotations from OED2: In general, this book really flipped my view of "how we should speak" on its head. Basically everything at least I've been taught about "how we should speak" came from the lens of patriarchy. That sounding like a cis white straight man was the standard. When really there are so many groups (not just women, but POC, the queer community, etc) that get berated on for how they speak when in actuality the way these marginalized groups speak have their own goals, needs, and functions. As a woman, I am so empowered by this book. Holy crap all these years of being told I need to speak a certain way to be taken seriously--that was all patriarchy. Patriarchy says we need to speak like men to receive the respect men receive. In actuality, there is so much to learn from in terms of how women speak and especially amongst groups of only women. I also found the tone to be annoying -- especially when the author said things along the lines of, "I'm not saying all men are horrible, but that's not NOT what I'm saying." I'm misquoting her, of course, but that definitely felt like the undertone of the entire book, which I found to be unproductive and, frankly, irritating. There are many diverse influences on the way that English is used across the world today. We look at some of the ways in which the language is changing. Read our series of blogs to find out more.