Breeder terms...a question...
 

Kimberly's post about breeding and show terms got me thinking but I didn't want to hijack her thread.

Why is it that all the terms used for the female have a negative connotation to them like...Dam and Bitch? But...the male terms have an almost puffed up and proud connotation like Sire and Stud. Makes me think a man had something to do with the choosing of those titles!

I think I said this somewhere else
 

You bet it is a man thing..... But when I was growing up, my grandfather raised and trained bird dogs..... Bitch was a term those old timers held in high regard.... we kids might have been a close second to those girls.... except he called us all "boys." Come on boys... didn't matter how many of us were girls or if we all were... so maybe there is something to that afterall...:D

I think those names used to be very positive but people have made them negative.:(

I agree with you .

they were positive at one time. i see nothing wrong with the terms and use them in the proper manner in which they are to be used. If people get upset, that is just their lack of knowledge.

I agree too....I remember the first time, years ago, I heard a breeder refer to his bitch. "She is one gorgeous bitch." He said it in the most respectful, admiring way--like he was talking about someone truly prized and precious to him.

This is an interesting thread..
I just had the "swear word" conversation with my twin daughters the other day. They're in 3rd grade now and are hearing more from kids, so they had questions. As I explained what the "B" word and others meant, we ended up laughing, because my daughters thought it was very funny that it was a "bad" word, when all it was is a female dog.

It's not that the females have negative terms. It's more that society has turned them negative. Perhaps due to the testiness when a female is about to give birth? I'd say they deserve a pass for that one :)

I guess I can live with the 'B' word...after all it stands for:

Being
In
Total
CHarge

;)

Thats it in a nutshell. It is not negative when we are using these words in the proper usage, its when people use them in the wrong way that they come to light as nasty/negative words.

Deana
Prestigeous Yorkies

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
That's exactly what happened. I'm confused about what you find negative about "dam" though. Are you sure you didn't mean "damn" which has always been a negative term.

Is it pronounced "Dame?"

interesting its origin



Where does the term bitch "female dog" come from and how did it get applied to women?

The word originally referred to female animals, especially dogs. It dates from about 1000 in the Old English written record and was bicce. Beyond that, etymologists cannot really say very much with authority. There is an Old Norse word bikkja with the same meaning, but it is unclear whether it came from the Old English word, or vice versa, or whether they are cognate with one another (meaning they have a common source). The OED suggests (by way of Jacob Grimm, German linguist and folklorist of the 19th century), that if the Old Norse word were the original, it may have come from Lappish pittja, though the Lappish word could have come from the Norse, too. There is a German word betze (or petze), but word historians seem to think that it is simply the Germanized form of the English word. Then there is French biche "bitch" and "fawn", but whether those are related to each other and/or the English word is not known. So, to sum up, we just don't know much about the word's earliest roots.

We can, however, see how bitch came to be applied to women. It was being used thus as early as 1400 and referred to a lewd or sensual woman. It was not uncommon to use it in literature of the time in that sense. It was simply a metaphor, comparing lewd women to female dogs, which, if left to their own devices, will bear pups rather frequently, suggesting sexual promiscuity. The more modern meaning of "malicious or treacherous woman" seems to have arisen in the 19th century, and Kipling used it metaphorically (thus, etymologically using a double metaphor!) in Traffics & Discoveries: "After eight years, my father, cheated by your bitch of a country, he found out who was the upper dog in South Africa" (1904).

If you were wondering, son of a bitch (in the form bitch-son) first appears in the written record in 1330 in Of Arthur & of Merlin, but we don't find it again until Shakespeare's time (1605) in King Lear: "One that...art nothing but the composition of a Knave, Begger, Coward, Pandar, and the Sonne and Heire of a Mungrill Bitch."

Look at it this way..an unmarried male is referred to as a bachelor. But an unmarried female is known as a spinster? Also..a guy that sleeps around is a pimp, but a woman who does the same thing is a slut? It's all in how society has defined certain words..

I also agree with you!

I call them man-whores or sluts! :cool: