When used with a rising, question-like intonation 'you know' does indeed connotate hesitancy or doubt ("It's not, you know, fair") but when spoken with a flat intonation ("It's not fair, you know") it does just the reverse. Leora Tanenbaum, for one, thinks that’s a bad idea. The author of I Am NOT a Slut: Slut Shaming in the Age of the Internet, she recently said in an interview with The Daily Beast, “I’m not trying to censor language. But at the same time I’m concerned. I look around campus and every single day we have a new report of an act of sexual assault on a college campus, and that gives me pause. The fact is that most people don’t use words like ‘slut’ and ‘ho’ the way we in the feminist in-group use it. So I’m asking people to think about what these words mean and how they can be used to shame other people.” a b c d Julia Wood (2014). Gendered Lives. Cengage Learning. p.108. ISBN 978-1-285-07593-8 . Retrieved 4 December 2015.

Before reading the book, I listened to an interview with Montell. She’s personable and engaging, and the book is written in much the same way as she talks. It was fun to hear that her mom is from New Orleans, so she uses and loves the word “y’all,” as opposed to a word like “guys,” for a mixed-gender group. “Folks” also works for her.

There is also an incredibly embarrassing passage in which she and her brother agree that when they say "How are you?" and the reply is, "I'm well," rather than "I'm good", that's a "common grammatical infraction" that makes them "reflexively cringe". This is because it's a case of hypercorrection, she asserts without explanation. It has to be unexplained because it's wrong: the Montells are mistaking 'well' in "I'm well" for the adverb 'well' (he cooks well), whereas it's obviously the adjective 'well' meaning 'in good health' (he was unwell for a while but now he's well again). "Everyone loves that gotcha feeling that comes with catching someone in a grammar violation, especially when you know the speaker was trying to sound smart," she writes proudly. Ooof. 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.

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. Model and actress Amber Rose was one of the first people to conduct and take a lead for a SlutWalk for people of color. "The Amber Rose SlutWalk Festival is a completely inclusive space. This event is a zero tolerance event and we do not condone hateful language, racism, sexism, ableism, fat-shaming, transphobia or any other kind of bigotry. Further, we recognize that shaming, oppression, assault and violence have disproportionately impacted marginalized groups, including women of color, transgender people and sex workers, and thus we are actively working to center these groups at our events." [32] See also a b Bennett, Jessica (20 March 2015). "Monica Lewinsky and Why the Word Slut Is Still So Potent". Time . Retrieved 17 January 2020. slut". The Mavens' Word of the Day. Random House. 15 December 1997. Archived from the original on 16 June 2013. Finally, as with all "pop science" literature in my experience, there were a plethora of conclusions drawn and generalizations made without evidence or cause.A hundred years later, when Samuel Johnson first published his dictionary, he defined a slut as “a dirty woman” and also noted that it was a word “of slight contempt to a woman.” The examples he cites all use “dirty” in its most obvious, non-sexual sense. 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. Gendered language has bothered me since I was a child; maybe because I was a voracious reader and noticed it in some books and not in others, or maybe I was sensitive to it because I have four brothers. I still bristle at the use of certain words, such as “mistress” to mean a female partner of an illicit love affair: Don’t get me started. 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.

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." The meaning "woman of low or loose character, bold hussy," if not intended in the earliest use, is attested by mid-15c., but the primary sense through 18c. was "woman who is uncleanly as regards her person or house." Johnson has it (second definition) as "A word of slight contempt to a woman" but sexual activity does not seem to figure into his examples. Playful use of the word, "young woman, wench," without implication of messiness or loose morals, is attested by 1660s: A brash, enlightening, and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us

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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.”