Rick, it's not a guy thing any more. Neither is guy, if it comes to
that ("hey, you guys!" hasn't been gendered since early on in Sesame
Street)
> 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 didn't notice it until a _lot_ more recently than that. But other
trans-gendering of gender-specific words ("Bitch," for instance;
"slut" probably goes back to Bill Murray in the film, can't remember
the name, where Dustin Hoffman played a woman) has been going on
about that long, so I may have just missed it. But here's an
interesting fact: neither my old 7th new Collegiate (1963) nor my New
World (1964) list "wimp" _at all_. My _new_ New World, however
(1968), lists it without any sense of gender: "a weak, ineffectual, or
insipid person." No etymology offered.
I'm doubtful of the "wimple" derivation, because "wimp" didn't come
into currency until _long_ after anyone saw or talked about wimples.
(And what about "rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing in his
ecstasy"? Was Hopkins just faking it, there?)
Anybody got a good slang dictionary to hand?
-- Russ
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