Response to Marshal on “Prick”

I don’t know why, but after I read this blog I felt the need to see what our trusty Oxford dictionary had to say about the word “prick” from our nifty online UT library tools. This is the first one that caught my eye, “As a term of endearment for a man: darling, sweetheart”. Yeah, my Mom used to call me Prick all the time. This one made more sense to today’s standards, “the penis”. I’ve never seen it used in that context but I could see how it would work. This one was much closer to what we use it for today, “a stupid, contemptible, or annoying person (esp. a man or boy). Also used as a general term of abuse”. I think this is pretty much how we use it today. It would be kind of more insulting I guess to call a woman a prick just like when you call a man a bitch; it has different connotation than when you call a woman a bitch.
And it even comes in compound form; prick-sucker is defined as “a person who performs fellatio”. No comment. Prick-teaser is defined as “a woman who gives the impression of being sexually available but refuses or evades sexual intercourse”; I know we all know how this term has transformed over the centuries. I thought this one was funny; prick-teased; defined as “that has been frustrated by a ‘prick-teaser’”. I know I didn’t answer your question Marshal, but at least know we all have new euphemisms to employ in our lexicon.