The 90-year-old bimbo
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.THE SPICE GIRLS may be a bunch of "bimbos" who think they invented the concept of "girl power" in 1996. In fact the phrase was first used in America 10 years previously.
Girl power and bimbo are both included in a new dictionary outlining words that have defined the 20th century. In many cases the words are much older than most people believe.
The Los Angeles Times has the first recorded use of girl power, which it defined as "health power - motivating young girls to take responsibility for their health and fitness". The dictionary, 20th Century Words, lists decade by decade the 5,000 most important words that have entered the English language over the past 100 years.
Not surprisingly the Sixties saw a large number of new words for drugs and the enhanced state of awareness they produce, while the Twenties was the decade of the "perm" and the "jive". Acronyms were a big feature of the Forties, the same time that "aliens" first appeared.
John Ayto, editor of the dictionary, to be published by Oxford University Press at the end of this month, said: "Researching the book confirmed what I had long suspected - that our assumptions about the language are often wide of the mark.
"It is perhaps not surprising that so many drug-related words sprang up in the 1960s but many people do not realise that the 'iron curtain' was in use back in the 1920s long before it passed into common usage after the Second World War."
And as for those bimbos, they have been around for nearly 90 years. The dictionary traces the first appearance of the word back to the 1910s.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments