Hello, readers!
Thank you to Jane Gredvig for sharing a Facebook reel with me to share with you. Don’t worry if you aren’t into Facebook, I’ve taken notes and done some additional research that I’ll share with you here.
Note: I am using male and female as the words were defined in the past, as long ago as the 1300s.
Many of you may be familiar with the word pejorative. Meriam-Webster defines pejorative as “a word or phrase that has negative connotations or that is intended to disparage or belittle.” Some synonyms for pejorative are insulting, derogatory, demeaning, and uncomplimentary.
The video, however, is about pejoration. It is a noun that means (also from M-W) “a change for the worse…specifically: an historical process by which the semantic and connotative status of a word tends to decline.” The Facebook reel claims that pejoration is a negative indicator of cultural biases if you look at language evolution throughout history. Now for some examples.
First, the voyage from a non-judgmental term for a woman, to a term meaning a promiscuous woman or prostitute.
| Original term | Original meaning | Pejorative meaning |
| Hussy | Housewife | Promiscuous woman |
| Wench | Girl | Promiscuous woman |
| Working girl | A girl who works | A prostitute |
As you can see, these terms are all for women. Where there are so-called male equivalents, these are not weighed down with the heaviness of the female version.
| Male term | Female term | Pejorative meanings |
| bachelor | spinster | Unmarried man (not pejorative) Unmarried woman (from the word spinster, because women without a husband were supposed to spend their time spinning or weaving, while unmarried men didn’t need a special term indicating they were single. From theOnline Etymology Dictionary: “Until the early 1900s, this was the legal designation in England of all unmarried women from a viscount’s daughter downward.” |
| Mister | Mistress | A man (not pejorative)
An unmarried woman. Was not originally pejorative, but now means somebody’s a man’s “side piece.” |
To bring this back to the negative indicator of cultural biases, there are examples from American cultures that are racist, classist, sexist, and just plain odd.
Notorious used to mean famous; now it means famous for something terrible. Silly has gone from happy to feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish. And awful went from full of awe to really bad.
Two of the sets of pejorative words representing classism are villain and boor, which meant farmworker. But as you know villain is now someone who does harm and a boor is an uncouth, rustic, uncultured person.
The final example is immigrant, which the video presenter says isn’t an insult, but many people give it a very negative emphasis. Keep your eyes open for words that seem to be evolving in their meanings over time, particularly those vilifying certain groups of people and what is going on in our culture that reflects these language changes.
Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications
Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com
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