A lot of surfer slang consists of in-crowd jargon or outmoded antiques: grommet (an eager young surfer), hodad (a non-surfer; a poser), log (a heavy surfboard), Noah (a shark). But other terms that bubbled up in the surf towns of Southern California, Hawaii, and Australia in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s – bro, dude, Cali (for California), wipeout – are now part of the everyday vocabulary of English-speaking landlubbers who may have no idea about the words’ briny origins. One of the most widespread of these expressions, and probably the most pertinent to our interests at Strong Language, is bitchin’, an adjective or interjection meaning “excellent,” “cool,” or “admirable.” 

It took a long time for bitch and its derivatives to evolve from veterinary noun (Old English: “female dog”) to taboo slur (for a woman c. 1400; for a man c. 1500) to slightly taboo verb (early 1900s: “talk spitefully”; early 1930s: “complain”) to a word so cheerily inoffensive that it’s used in brand names that are prominently displayed in mass-market retail outlets like Costco. Along the way, bitch begat dozens of slangy spin-offs, most of them U.S. in origin and mostly pejorative, that include bitch bath (perfume instead of soap and water), bitch box (loudspeaker), and bitch light (a twisted rag soaked in grease and used for illumination). 

Bitch and its relatives were considered highly offensive from the 18th century on: In Wicked Words (1989), author Hugh Rawson notes that people resorted to euphemisms like “lady dog” even in the “proper canine context.” (Speaking of dogs, Rawson informs us that the poet John Keats coined bitchrell on the model of “doggerel.” It was naughty enough that Keats self-bowdlerized the word as B–rell–.) It wasn’t until 1962 that bitch was heard in a Hollywood movie (Advise & Consent; the speaker was Gene Tierney, saying of Washington hostesses, “They say any bitch with a million bucks can be the best”). Elton John could sing “The Bitch Is Back” in 1974, but there was still enough opprobrium surrounding bitch in 1984 that Barbara Bush, campaigning for her husband George H.W. Bush, cattily demurred when calling Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro “that four-million-dollar – I can’t say it, but it rhymes with ‘rich.’”

Twenty years later, bitch was fully out in the open. It was heard frequently on the TV series How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014): See Michael Adams’s four “Bitch Chronicles” posts, in which he posits that bitch was the solution for “tonal accuracy” in the show’s dialogue, “permissible on television, but not always in polite conversation.” Around the same time, bitch attached itself to a whole category of wines marketed at women; as I wrote in 2015, the trend began in 2004 with an Australian Grenache called simply Bitch and expanded into unrelated brands like Sassy Bitch, Tasty Bitch, and more. And 2012 brought us resting bitch face, “a facial expression that unintentionally creates the impression that a person is angry, annoyed, irritated, or contemptuous, particularly when the individual is relaxed, resting, or not expressing any particular emotion” (Wikipedia).

By then, bitchin’/bitchen had migrated from surf shacks to high streets. The earliest agreed-on appearance in print of positive bitchen is in Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas, the 1957 novel by Frederick Kohner that was inspired by his teenage daughter’s experiences with the Malibu Point surf crowd: “It was a bitchen day too. The sun was out and all that, even though it was near the end of November.” The spelling gradually settled on bitchin’, eliding the g of the participle. American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society, included bitchin’ in a 1965 issue under “Notes on Campus Vocabulary,” observing that it could “serve both as an interjection (bitchin’, man! = ‘Great!’) and as an adjective.” The Surfin’ary, a compilation of surf terms originally published in 1991, calls bitchin’ “a sixties term for cool adopted by surfers” and adds that “it has now been replaced by rad” (from radical). But editor Trevor Gralle also inserts this unverified anecdote:

The word bitchin’, derived from bitching – as in “Quit your bitching” – may have been coined by Dale Velzy in 1949. While surfing with the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, Velzy was overjoyed after a ride and said, “That was a bitchin’ wave,” giving the word new meaning and a positive connotation.    

Velzy (1927–2005) was a pioneering Southern California surfer and surfboard maker; according to a Los Angeles Times obituary, he was “surfing’s first commercial shaper or builder.” 

I haven’t been able to confirm Velzy’s reappropriation of bitchin’, but I have found evidence for earlier positive or emphatic uses of bitch that may have laid the groundwork. As early as 1928, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (HDAS), bitching could be a synonym for “whopping” or “damned,” and bitch kitty was World War II slang for “something extraordinary.” (“She’s flying right along. Bitch kitty of an airplane.”)

Today, although bitch can still skew negative – and necessitate a softened version, bish, that tones down the aggression and evades online censorship – the adjective/interjection bitchin’ has achieved full cultural integration. As proof, I point you to the U.S. trademark database, which as of this writing includes 32 registered or pending marks with adjectival BITCHIN’. Besides the aforementioned Bitchin’ Sauces – whose owners also own a record label, Bitchin’ Music Group, phone number 1-737-BITCHIN – there’s Bitchin’ Kitchen, a cooking program that launched on Canadian TV in 2010; Bitchin’ Kitten Brewery (Pennsylvania); Bitchin’ Berry beer (Nevada); Bob’s Bitchin’ BBQ (Wisconsin;, Bitchin Coffee (North Carolina); Bitchin’ Betty brown ale (also North Carolina); and Bitchin’ Digs commercial and residential design in Malibu, California, home of the original bitchin’ surfer girl Gidget.

Like bad, wicked, and sick, three other negatives-turned-slang-positive, bitchin’ has reversed course, from pejorative to enthusiastically approving. While other surfer slang has crested and ebbed — does anyone still say “quimby” or “kookster”? — bitchin’ continues to ride a long, sweet wave of acceptance by the mainstream.

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2024/03/27/thats-bitchin/