When did it become commonplace to apply the word WIMP to women? My
sense is about ten or fifteen years ago--that before that mostly only
men were called wimps.
I ask because I believe the etymology of WIMP is from WIMPLE
and that, like SISSY (from SISTER), it originally was a way to saying
'Don't act like a woman."
Etymology, of course, is not connotation. If I'm right about
this shift ten or fifteen years ago, however, the etymological root
still connoted fairly recently.
Incidentally, my students just told me that SLUT is a word in
the process of becoming ungendered (to compensate for the lack of
derrogatory words in English referring to male promiscuity), that it
has gone from being strictly feminine, to be used in constructions
like MALE SLUT to now being a word that one can apply to men without
explicit modification. (The primary informant did say, however, that
she likes doing the last because it feels adventurous.)
