• Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      I mean - nowadays it sorta is, it’s been heavily relegated to sexually fetishised contexts.

      But the reason a “Dirndl” is called that is, because “Dirne” is a word that used to mean just “woman” but went through a linguistic evolution to mean “prostitute” quite a while ago. Off the top of my head, I don’t know of an example that happened similiarly in English, but I’d guess there’s bound to be something like that there, too

      • Malgas@beehaw.org
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        4 months ago

        “Courtesan” is an example in English, originally meaning ‘noblewoman’.

        There’s also “minx”, which originally just meant ‘person’. (It’s a cousin of “mensch”.)