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Bimbo is a derogatory slang term for an attractive but unintelligent female. The term was originally used in the United States as early as 1919 for an unintelligent or brutish male.
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As of the early 21st century, the "stereotypical bimbo" appearance has become that of an attractive person, often blonde and (in the case of women) with a curvaceous figure and large breasts, possibly wearing heavy makeup and revealing clothing. However, none of these traits are strictly needed for a person to be considered a bimbo. It is sometimes associated with men or women who dye their hair blonde indicating that physical attractiveness is more important to them than other, non-physical traits and as an extension to the "dumb blonde" stereotype.
bimbo girl
History
The word bimbo derives itself from the Italian bimbo, a masculine-gender term that means "(male) baby" or "young (male) child" (the feminine form of the Italian word is bimba). Use of this term began in the United States as early as 1919, and was a slang word used to describe an unintelligent or brutish man.
It was not until the 1920s that the term bimbo first began to be associated with females. In 1920, Frank Crumit, Billy Jones, and Aileen Stanley all recorded versions of "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle", with words by Grant Clarke and music by Walter Donaldson, in which the term "bimbo" is used to describe an island girl of questionable virtue. The 1929 silent film Desert Nights describes a wealthy female crook as a bimbo and in The Broadway Melody, an angry Bessie Love calls a chorus girl a bimbo. The first use of its female meaning cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1929, from the scholarly journal American Speech, where the definition was given simply as "a woman".
In the 1940s, bimbo was still being used to refer to both men and women, as in, for example the comic novel Full Moon by P.G. Wodehouse who wrote of “bimbos who went about the place making passes at innocent girls after discarding their wives like old tubes of toothpaste”.
The term died out again for much of the 20th century until it became popular again in the 1980s, with political sex scandals. As bimbo began to be used increasingly for females, exclusively male variations of the word began to surface, like mimbo and himbo, a backformation of bimbo, which refers to an unintelligent but attractive man.
Music
Internet
Television
Politics
In American politics, the word was used in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct allegations, leading to the invention of the term "Bimbo eruptions" to refer to political sex scandals. The expression was also used in a 2014 report in which Colin Powell explained his reluctance to vote for Hillary Clinton in light of her husband's continued affairs with "bimbos".
After the first 2015 Republican Presidential Debate, Donald Trump re-tweeted a message calling debate moderator and Fox News host Megyn Kelly a "bimbo" via Twitter. This took place after Kelly asked Trump a question that referenced his television show The Apprentice from season 6 in 2005 Shortly afterwards, Stephen Richter of The Globalist published an opinion piece in which he accused Trump of being a bimbo, noting the original definition of bimbo as 'an unintelligent or brutish male'.
Quotations
(stupid or foolish person):
And one had to remember that most of the bimbos to whom Roberta Wickham had been giving the bird through the years had been of the huntin', shootin' and fishin' type, fellows who had more or less shot their bolt after saying 'Eh, what?' and slapping their leg with a hunting crop.
Isn't he the bimbo who took the bread out of the mouths of the Thursday Review people? Chuck the blighter out of the window and we want to see him bounce.