Children seem to delight in picking up the worst words in the playground. But as well as inventing new and modern insults, some words have been on the lips of challenging youngsters for hundreds of years.
Susie Dent is a resident of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, and she also studies the origins of words at Oxford University Press. She took Lizz Pearson to the headquarters of OUP to explore one word used against women that seems never to have lost its power to abuse, from the biblical era to modern day rap - Jezebel. |
