biddy

Biddy can refer to a nosy, old woman or attractive, young woman. Both uses can be considered offensive. 

Content warning: this article contains references to sexual and sexist content.

Biddy, for a newly hatched chicken, is recorded in the 1600s. It may come from the sound people make to call chickens, e.g., Here, biddy biddy.

Biddy, as a demeaning term for an old woman, is recorded in the 1700s. It comes from a nickname of the popular Irish given name Bridget, originally used to address female servants. Biddy became a name for a kind of fussy, older woman that had the irritating habit of sticking her nose in matters where it didn’t belong. It often appears in the phrase old biddy.

For a period of time in the early 1900s, biddy was even a name given to police officers. By the 1960s, the word had joined a list of many other slang terms for female breasts. In Black slang, biddy, sometimes spelled as bitty, transitioned into a slang term for a young, usually attractive woman in the U.S. starting around the 1980s and 1990s.

Referring to an old woman as an old biddy implies they are shrewish and nagging; it’s generally considered sexist to call a woman a biddy in this way.

Calling a young woman a biddy is also often seen as sexist, as it can imply they are simply sex objects. However, some young people do use biddy (or its variant bitty) as an affectionate term of address.

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.