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bitch

(bĭch)

1. A female canine animal, especially a dog.

2. Offensive A woman considered to be mean, overbearing, or contemptible.

3. Vulgar Slang

a. A prostitute considered in relation to a pimp.

b. A person in a subservient sexual role, especially an incarcerated male who provides sex to another male under threat of violence or in exchange for protection.

c. A person who is submissive to another, usually by performing menial or unpleasant tasks.

d. A man considered to be weak or contemptible.

4. Slang A complaint.

5. Slang Something very unpleasant or difficult: Fixing the faucet turned out to be a bitch.

v. bitched, bitch·ing, bitch·es Slang

v.intr.

To complain; grumble.

v.tr.

To botch; bungle. Often used with up.

Phrasal Verb:

bitch out Slang

To reprimand loudly or harshly.

[Middle English bicche, from Old English bicce.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

December: I quit bitching with grateful thanks for all the good times, things and friends God has provided me with this year.

Life's a bitch if you're old

Catherine Jones gets her claws outa BITCHING - the subject of a new book - is the single most important skill if you are a woman.

You're either in - in which case you lead a charmed existence buoyed by bitching emails, texts and phone calls - or you're out, which means anything you do will be held against you.

The wisest women don't lead the pack, instead treading a fine line between bitching - always better if it's even slightly amusing as opposed to pure venom-based - and being fair-minded.

The wisest women don't lead the pack, instead they tread a fine line between bitching

Bitching is Joan Collins as Joan Collins but also as Alexis in the 80s TV classic Dynasty, putting an elegant boot into Krystal Carrington in episode after episode.

HOW TO BE A RIGHT BITCH; By someone who knows the sharp end of a stiletto

IRISH women are big into bitching, according to a survey conducted by Archers Aqua.

For proper bitching, nobody but nobody can beat the characters on the TV show Gimme Gimme Gimme, the rest of us are in the halfpenny place.

Clare McKeon's column: Bitching? It's safe to say this man knows nothing

BITCHING is part of a good night out on the town for Irish women, a survey revealed yesterday.

And not surprisingly 48 per cent love a good old bitching session about former boyfriends.

THE BIGGEST BITCHES; Women up for slagging off friends on night out

This invitation made me appreciate a number of things: the importance of communicative connections in working women's lives; the pleasure of getting together to talk about each other's troubles; the ways bitching can give emotional expression to and some sense of relief from the troubles that preoccupy women's hearts at work.

I want to sort through some of these delineations by revisiting Jones's (1980/1990) classic observation about bitching as a sub-category of gossip that performs on two levels: on the interpersonal level as "complaining" and on the political level as "consciousness-raising." When Jones made her bi-level observation in 1980, the second-wave Women's Liberation Movement was still vibrant and consciousness-raising groups were still active enclaves full of "bitching" women learning together and from each other that "the personal is political" (cf.

"All They Do Is Bitch Bitch Bitch": Political and Interactional Features of Women's Officetalk