Panoply meaning tv#
Panoply meaning free#

A battery-operated Little Mermaid Shimmering Lights Ariel doll that supposedly says the words 'You're a slut' made it to the ABC news website last December after a 'shocked' mother contacted the media. Yet the word hasn't been completely defanged. Grown-up women will good-naturedly call each other 'slut,' employing the word with all its sexual connotations in subtle, ironic rebellion against a double standard that refuses to go away. Mimi Hagiepetros, a 13-year-old Toronto student, says her schoolmates mostly use it 'lovingly' and 'as a joke.' 'I would never, absolutely never, present my wife in this way.'Īmong younger people, though, the friendly use of 'slut' is common. To him, 'slut' still reverberates with negative connotations linked to sexual promiscuity. ' It was kind of friendly – he was saying that I break the rules.' 'I was complaining about the inane bureaucracy at the University of Toronto, and he said, `You're a typical slut.

Marcel Danesi, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto who teaches semiotics and youth culture, observes that 'slut' is now an ambiguous word whose various meanings include – in hip-hop – 'my woman.' Yet he was taken aback when a colleague called him a 'slut' recently. The funniest bit of pop culture to remove some of the sting from 'slut' was the Saturday Night Live 'Weekend Update' skit in which Dan Aykroyd routinely addressed co-anchor Jane Curtin as 'Jane, you ignorant slut.' 'Loose,' 'floozy,' 'easy' and 'has a reputation' now seem awfully quaint.) (In fact, 'slut' is one of the few judgmental terms from pre-sexual revolution days that still has currency. Until recently in North America, that was the only sense in which it was used. By the middle of the 15th century, it had acquired its taint of sexual licentiousness. The word first emerged in Middle English as 'slutte,' which denoted a dirty, untidy woman, a meaning it still bears in the U.K.

Panoply meaning tv#

Witness Barbara Amiel Black's meltdown last week in a Chicago courthouse, in which she called a female Canadian TV producer a 'slut.' Apparently, Black was upset by the journalist's assertiveness in trying to get into the same elevator – not exactly sluttiness in the traditional sense. Why does it pop up so readily? Because it can still hurt. For people lashing out against a girl or woman, the four-letter word is – like 'bitch' – one of those reflex insults that leap from the tongue. You could argue that the 'slutification' of female fashion has further demolished the barrier between what used to be considered 'good' and 'bad' girls.īut 'slut' can still pack a knockout punch of contempt, even when it's aimed at someone who isn't being, well, slutty. The word has become so benign that there's at least one 'Slut' line of clothing, not to mention lip balm and bubble bath bearing the word.

Panoply meaning free#

Or it has metaphorical meaning – you're a slut for something you can't resist.Īt first it might seem that feminism and the sexual revolution have dulled the word's power to demean: how can anyone be a slut – 'a promiscuous woman,' as The Canadian Oxford Dictionary puts it – if females are free to be as sexual as men?

These days the word is often used as an affectionate tease among friends, especially adolescent girls.