Tuesday, December 18, 2007

slut

According to the OED, "slut" and "slutty" goes back to the fifteenth century. It originally meant "dirty" -- so, a house could be slutty. "Slutty" as applied to a woman (a la Brinkman below) was added to the OED in 2004, and their first example is from the 1970s. "Slut" for a loose woman does date back to the second half of the fifteenth century; surely "slutty" was used before 1970 if that's the case.

History is interesting, yes. But even reading the word in the OED makes me uncomfortable. So many connotations.

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