bimbo

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian bimbo (“little child, baby”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} an Italian word recorded from the 16th century, used also as a term of endearment for older boys and, often ironically, for grown men.^[2] The OED takes it as a variant of bambo (“baby”), in the same sense as bambino;^[2] Etymonline and Green's Dictionary of Slang take it as a shortening of bambino, and Etymonline adds that it came into American English about 1900 with immigrants from Italy, for a little child or a child's doll.^[7][8] Collins suggests that it passed through Polari.^[6] The American Heritage Dictionary gives the Italian origin only as possible, and Merriam-Webster Unabridged calls the origin unknown.^[9][10] Etymonline sees the slang word as a convergence with the frequent 19th-century name Bimbo, given to race horses, dogs, monkeys and stage clowns.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A man, a fellow, usually a stupid or worthless one: 1919, in the American Magazine, "Nothing but the most heroic measures will save the poor bimbo".^[2][11] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the sense to 1918,^[10] and Green's Dictionary of Slang has a thug or large stupid man from 1914.^[8]

Semantic evolution

According to Etymonline, Damon Runyon traced the use of bimbo for a stupid or ineffectual man to Philadelphia prize-fight slang in 1919, and the male word survived as an insult for a thug or bully into the 1940s.^[7] P. G. Wodehouse still used it of men in the 1940s.^[10][11][12] The word was applied to women from 1920,^[2] and a popular song of that year, "My Little Bimbo Down on Bamboo Isle", may have helped it to the sense "floozie";^[7] through the 1920s it meant something like a flapper or vamp, and by then also a prostitute.^[7][8] Merriam-Webster's Word Histories compares the way baby came to mean a girlfriend or woman, dates the sense of a promiscuous woman to about 1929, and credits the detective novels of the 1930s with spreading the stereotype of the beautiful but dumb blonde.^[11] Ayto suggests that dumbo, "fool", from the early 1930s, reinforced the idea of empty-headedness.^[5] The word then fell out of common use;^[7] Etymonline notes that the 1967 Dictionary of American Slang entered only the short form bim.^[7] It revived from about 1975 and became a vogue word in the 1980s, when the press used it of young women whose affairs with rich or powerful men became public;^{[7][11][5][8]} it also produced bimbette (1983) and the male himbo (1988).^[7]

Timeline

• 1919 – a man, a fellow, often a stupid or objectionable one (now rare).^[2][11]
• 1920 – a woman, especially an attractive young one; later chiefly an attractive but unintelligent young woman.^[2]
• 1977 – an attractive but unintelligent young man.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (slang, disparaging) An attractive but empty-headed young woman, especially one regarded only as a sex object: The tabloids dismissed her as a bimbo.^[6][10][2]
2. (slang, disparaging) An attractive but unintelligent young man; a himbo.^[2][8]
3. (dated slang) A man or fellow, especially a foolish or worthless one.^[10][2][3]

Word family

• bimbette

Related words

• bambino
• himbo

Usage notes

The word is disparaging in every use.^[11] Earlier, unrelated, bimbo was the name of a punch made with brandy, rum or arrack, sugar and lemon, recorded in the north-eastern United States from 1837 and probably an alteration of bumbo.^[2][7] In business, BIMBO (1991) is an acronym of buy-in management buyout, formed humorously after the slang word.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
6. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press