A website called 'Today I Found' out has an article called ‘WHY ARE WOMEN CALLED SLUTS, DAMES, AND BROADS?’ as has some very interesting points.
It starts with stating where the origin of the word slut originated from, ‘“slut” originally didn't mean at all what it means today. For instance, in a diary from 1664, Samuel Pepys writes….’
‘In modern day terms, this diary entry seems quite suggestive for a man to describe a servant girl such. However, at this time, while the term had begun to take on a more suggestive connotation of “woman with loose morals”, it still also was commonly used with the original meaning, that of a “messy, dirty, or untidy” woman or girl. Because of this, it was frequently used at this time as a name for kitchen maids and servant girls, as Pepys was talking about in the above quote.
The word first popped up in English with this latter “slovenly” definition around the 14th century and by the 15th century had started to be used to describe promiscuous women as well. It also came to be a somewhat common term for an ugly woman, as in a quote from 1715, “Nor was she a woman of any beauty, but was a nasty slut.”
In the 19th century in England, slut still retained something of its original meaning, even so far as garbage cans being called “slut-holes”, meaning a hole for rubbish. This can be seen in a Saturday Review snipped from 1862, “There are a good many slut-holes in London to rake out.”
Much more recently, Helen Fielding in Bridget Jones’s Diary used the word “slut” with its original meaning, “Check plates and cutlery for tell-tale signs of sluttish washing up…”, so the original meaning is still around, albeit much less commonly used now than the “promiscuous” definition.
As to where the word “slut” came from, that isn’t entirely known. It may have come from the German “schlutt”, meaning “slovenly woman” or the Swedish “slata”, meaning “idle woman”.’
This is a useful as a word that I shall be using is the word Slut. I have had many thoughts on how to show the meaning, power and hurt behind a word and knowing the origins of a word can help influence my work. This questions why women are called such a word and explores the origin of the word, I could show how this and other words with similar meaning come to be used in such a way, to show the development of a word from a simple, sometimes innocent use to a word that is seen and said in hurtful ways.
