> ROGER MILLS wrote:
>> And Rosta wrote (re bint)
>>> Mildly disrespectful rather than very insulting, I'd say. Comparable
>>> to _fiddle_ versus _violin_. It's a synonym of _woman_, and similar to
>>> _wench_ (in being a synonym of _woman_ with different sociolinguistic
>>> value), and unlike innumerably many other derogatory words for women
>>> that add some further element of meaning (sexual laxity, garrulity,
>>> irascibility, etc.). Actually though, I might be wrong, for upon
>>> further introspection I conclude that it means 'foreign (nonanglo)
>>> woman'; I would never talk about a 'Yorkshire bint' or a 'Texas bint',
>>> but I would call my missus an 'Eyetie bint'. However, neither Dennis
>>> the repressed serf nor the OED agree with me on this.
>>>
>> I'g duess, then, that the word came via military slang, from all those
>> years in India (Muslim/Urdu speaking areas?) abd/or the mid-east.
>>
>
> Or just from Anglo-Indian jargon?
>
> I was familiar with the word as a school kid in the 1950s here in
> Britain. It was part our schoolboy jargon (it was an all boys school)
> and there was no awareness that the word was foreign - I learnt that later.
>
> It's not a word I'd normally use now - it seems rather dated to me - but
> I'd not find it particularly odd if I heard it. As far as I remember,
> we'd use the word for youngish (nubile) females, say in their teens or
> twenties, maybe early thirties. Once a woman reached middle age she was
> definitely, to us school boys, a biddy, not a bint ;)
>
> Expressions like 'Yorkshire bint' or a 'Texas bint' do not seem odd to
> me, as long as they're used when _referring_ to individuals (i.e. in the
> 3rd person). My own recollection is that to use 'bint' when addressing a
> female would have been mildly derogatory.
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Ph. D. wrote:
> > Lars Finsen wrote:
> >>
> >> Den 20. jun. 2008 kl. 17.26 skrev Peter Collier:
> >>>
> >>> I just love 'Bintland' - it conjures up such a
> >>> marvellous mental image of some kind of theme park of 'ill repute'.
> >>
> >> I see, so the connection is that obvious.
>
> Certainly a land populated with nubile maidens - the 'ill repute' bit
> wouldn't figure very strongly, if at all, in my understanding.
>
> >> I thought 'bint' was rather
> >> an obscure word. At least Matthew Reilly, my latest translation
> >> victim, seems
> >> to think you need to be somewhat familiar with Arabic to recognise it.
>
> No - just to have been brought up in the right part of the world and,
> possibly, in certain generations (Is the word readily known among
> teenagers in modern Britain? I don't know).
>
> > Well, I've never run across that word here in the United States.
>
> So it didn't get across the Pond, I guess.
>
> --
> Ray
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>
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>