From Gore Vidal's "Burr", page 380:
Muffled against the arctic air, I walked through the darkening grey streets, trying not to slip on frozen cobbles, to avoid snow bitches, to stay out of the path of the sleighs with their ominous thin tinkle and clatter of bells, and their terrifying propensity to slide wildly out of control, smashing the legs of horses - and of the poor who like myself walk.
So, what is a snow bitch?
I don't know, but I'm glad you're there. (here?)
Might this be a typo for "snow ditches"?
Not that it makes any more sense, as snow ditches would simply be ditches.
Bing: That's what I say. 730 hits but no defs. Must be very new term
Can't be that new, the book was written in the 1970s.
Bing: To me at age 75, anything from 1970 is new
Jackie: Thank you for that link
But would this exist on the streets of New York (in the 1830s)? And why would it be hazardous unless the snow was very tightly packed?
I'm not positive I've understood what these bitches are exactly, but snow in cities poses many risks. First off, if the sun shines during the day and drips onto a smaller mound below eaves and freezes it can be dangerously slippery. I thinking wrists and coccyx. If only a slight slope is created then it can give you the impression that it's safe to step on (especially if fresh snow covers ice) whereas in reality it is like being on roller skates - that give sideways too.
Another obvious danger is that walking where you find mounds can indicate that snow and ice have fallen there from a greater height. In Alpine areas one generally leans long wooden sticks (snow level posts) against the walls of buildings to warn pedestrians or even cordon off areas. People are injured and even killed every year from falling ice. Course, it's better than being hit by something like this:
n-tv.de/673662.html
So I conclude from your remarks and Jackie's revealing link, as well as input from other quarters, that a snow bitch is just about any kind of formation from dripping water
If it's a play on "snowman," then isn't the expr sexist
I wrote to the owner of this site
http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/vidalframe.html, who suggests that 'bitches' is a dialect form of 'beaches', and that 'snow bitches' would therefore be snow banks.
> snow banks.
Sounds sensible. Has the bitches/beaches been proven to occur otherwise? I know that while I was in Greece I constantly had to smile at the way the locals said beach - sounds just like bitch.
Also, keep in mind that - even without the bitch/beach dialect variation - an 1800's "period novel" talking about snow bitches would merely be referring to canines with a perfectly acceptable turn of phrase, not the human variety you seem to be thinking about.
> an 1800's "period novel" talking about snow bitches would merely be referring to canines..
Really?
"Bitch" meaning "female dog" is far from obsolete - it's still very much in use among breeders and hunters, and naturalists use it in reference to female wolves, coyotes, dingoes, foxes, etc.
For female humans I don't like, I generally use "ogress," since the last time an actual ogress was seen around here, there was probably alcohol involved.
From Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:
bitch. A lewd woman: SE from origin (-1400) to ca. 1660, when it > coll.; since ca. 1837 it has been vulg. rather than coll. (In C. 20 low London it — a fast young woman.) As coll.: e.g., in Arbuthnot's John Bull and Fielding's Tom Jones. --2. Opprobriously of a man: C 16 SE; in C 17-18, coll., as in Hobbes and Fielding. --3. Tea: Cambridge University, ca. 1820-1914. EDD Prob. ex stand bitch. --4. The queen in playing cards, mainly public house; from C 20 James Curtis The Gilt Kid. 1936.
bitch. Go whoring; frequent harlots: from Restoration times to ca. 1830. [...]
[...]
bitch, stand. To preside at tea or perform some other female part: late C 18 - early 19.
No entry for snow bitch.
> No entry for snow bitch.
Well quite. I am puzzled as to Khyron's suggestion that the novel referred to dogs.
Bing: I queried another board where some of the participants have extensive libraries, and here's a response from one Ken Greenwald:
Dale, If Mr. Bingley on Wordsmith.org is your source for this quote, you might want to ask him what version of the novel he is referring to and try checking it yourself. I’m sitting here looking at my 1973 copy of Gore Vidal’s Burr – A Novel, ISBN: 0-375-70873-1, and I’m looking on page 380 and it is JUNE, 1835, and there ain’t a SNOW BITCH in sight. Now he might have a different version which could account for the different page numbers. I did scan 20 or so pages before and after, but the difference could be more than that and I missed it. If the quote is accurate, which I have some doubts about - if anything I would guess it said 'snow ditches,' as someone on that sight suggested - why don't you find the title of the section so that you and I can see it for ourselves because, to tell you the truth, I am having a hard time swallowing SNOW BITCH pre-1830s – but one never knows...
...Dale, Don’t give up. Since you have a Wordsmith.org conversation going with Bingley, who provided the quote, why not ask him what version of the book he found it in (publisher, year, ISBN, chapter title) and then this thing can be put to rest one way or the other
As I've lent my copy to someone, and this one has a different cover, I'm not sure if it's the same as mine or not, but according to the search inside function it does have snow bitches:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN...601248-8623024
We should also remember that just because an author uses a word or phrase in a historical novel it doesn't mean that that word or phrase was current in the time of the novel.
Quote:
We should also remember that just because an author uses a word or phrase in a historical novel it doesn't mean that that word or phrase was current in the time of the novel.
viz. Shakespeare (?!)
viz. Shakespeare Yeah, his writing was full of all those clichés.