The origin of the word "broad"?

Question

broad : Offensive Slang - Woman or girl.

I was wondering how the word "broad" came to bear such an offensive meaning...anybody know of the history behind this?

Answer 1

Broad certainly started as a derogatory term for women of easy virtue, as we used to say, but later it came to designate all women, albeit by careless speakers. For example, in "South Pacific" the sailors, after a couple of women-less years, sing "...and she's broad where a broad should be broad" in the song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame".
Another derogatory term that's heard with less freqeuncy. Wentworth and Flexner in their "Dictionary of American Slang" cite the following: Damon Runyon, 1932: "He refers to Miss Perry as a broad, meaning no harm whatever, for this is the way many of the boys speak of the dolls." (Still ANOTHER dated term.) And also: from an article by Paul Sann, writing in the New York Post (1958): "Mrs. Elsie Bainbridge, daughter of Rudyard Kipling, refused to approve a new Frank Sinatra (requiescat in pacem) recording of 'On the Road to Mandalay.' You see, Frankie substituted the word broad for girl."
The Sunday New York Times (5/17/98) cited two more quotations from Sinatra using "broad", in one of which he was referring to Ava Gardner, of whom he said, "I'm going to marry that broad" and of course did just that.
There is some question apparently about its etymology: some say it is derived from BAWD; others that it comes from the expression "broad in the beam", said originally I am sure of ships. Cf. the lyric above from "South Pacific." Not too great a leap to all "shes", all women with a truncating of the phrase to the single word, broad.

Answer 2

Broad
Where did this slang word for woman come from? It comes from a broad being a playing card. This may sound absurd on the face of it, but if you follow the development of slang uses of broad it all becomes clear.

Broad is an 18th century slang term for a playing card, especially one used in three card monte. This usage may refer to style of playing deck. In modern card decks, a bridge deck has narrower cards than are found in in poker deck. If this variation in card size is older (I know words, not cards), then a broad could be a reference to this larger cut of cards. From George Parker's 1781 A View of Society:

Black-Legs, who live by the Broads* and the Turf . . . *Cant for cards.
By the 20th century this sense of broad had expanded to include tickets of admission and transportation. From Field's Watch Yourself of 1912:

Fix the olly! I gave him broads to the show!
And from Jackson & Hellyer's 1914 A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang:

"Beating the broads" is corrupting the conductor or other collecting functionaire of a transportation line.
At about the same time, the term is recorded to mean a prostitute. Also from Jackson & Hellyer:

Broad, Noun Current amongst genteel grafters chiefly. A female confederate; a female companion, a woman of loose morals. Broad is derived from the far-fetched metaphor of "meal ticket," signifying a female provider for a pimp, from the fanciful correspondence of a meal ticket to a railroad or other ticket.
If the meal ticket connection is too much for you, the sense could have jumped from three card monte to woman. The goal of that game is to pick the queen from among three cards, and broad could have transferred from the card, to the queen, to women.

The general sense of broad meaning a woman, as opposed to the specific one of prostitute, is cited from 1911, from the September issue of Hampton's Magazine:

Pretty soon what is technically known as a "broad"–"broad" being the latest New Yorkese–hove into sight.
Although this general sense is cited three years earlier than than the prostitution sense, it is likely that the prostitution sense is older since the earliest citations of that are in slang dictionaries, meaning the term was around for a while before the lexicographers got hold of it.

(Source: Historical Dictionary of American Slang; New Partridge Dictionary of Slang)

Answer 3

Broad Slang

Answer 4

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RE:
The origin of the word "broad"?
broad : Offensive Slang - Woman or girl.

I was wondering how the word "broad" came to bear such an offensive meaning...anybody know of the history behind this?

Answer 5

Excuse me, being English and a frequent user or the word bloody, I'd have to disagree with some points. - Firstly, it's certainly not archaic. Old, maybe, but not archaic as it is still in common usage today. - Secondly, it is most certainly not very vulgar. It's a very light hearted and unoffensive swear word in the scheme of things, as with bugger, git and sod, which are all quite acceptable (although still not polite). I could even get away with saying those words in front of my mother (although I'd probably get a scowl), whereas with some swear words, like crap, sh*t, etc, I'd probably get a shoe thrown at me. It is most likely it have been a corruption of 'by our lady', which was an archaic curse. I doubt it is an actual reference to blood, although I think the if the word 'bloody' hadn't already existed and been in usage I doubt it would have corrupted in the same fashion. Covered in blood is also 'bloody'. In the same way that 'stalk' can mean part of a plant or the action of stalking someone; or 'bill' can mean something you need to pay or a duck's beak.

Answer 6

Broad
Where did this slang word for woman come from? It comes from a broad being a playing card. This may sound absurd on the face of it, but if you follow the development of slang uses of broad it all becomes clear.

Broad is an 18th century slang term for a playing card, especially one used in three card monte. This usage may refer to style of playing deck. In modern card decks, a bridge deck has narrower cards than are found in in poker deck. If this variation in card size is older (I know words, not cards), then a broad could be a reference to this larger cut of cards. From George Parker's 1781 A View of Society:

Black-Legs, who live by the Broads* and the Turf . . . *Cant for cards.
By the 20th century this sense of broad had expanded to include tickets of admission and transportation. From Field's Watch Yourself of 1912:

Fix the olly! I gave him broads to the show!
And from Jackson & Hellyer's 1914 A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang:

"Beating the broads" is corrupting the conductor or other collecting functionaire of a transportation line.
At about the same time, the term is recorded to mean a prostitute. Also from Jackson & Hellyer:

Broad, Noun Current amongst genteel grafters chiefly. A female confederate; a female companion, a woman of loose morals. Broad is derived from the far-fetched metaphor of "meal ticket," signifying a female provider for a pimp, from the fanciful correspondence of a meal ticket to a railroad or other ticket.
If the meal ticket connection is too much for you, the sense could have jumped from three card monte to woman. The goal of that game is to pick the queen from among three cards, and broad could have transferred from the card, to the queen, to women.

The general sense of broad meaning a woman, as opposed to the specific one of prostitute, is cited from 1911, from the September issue of Hampton's Magazine:

Pretty soon what is technically known as a "broad"–"broad" being the latest New Yorkese–hove into sight.
Although this general sense is cited three years earlier than than the prostitution sense, it is likely that the prostitution sense is older since the earliest citations of that are in slang dictionaries, meaning the term was around for a while before the lexicographers got hold of it.

(Source: Historical Dictionary of American Slang; New Partridge Dictionary of Slang)

Answer 7

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It's short for "by our Lady" which is swearing against the queen. It's like saying g-d damned.