Re: bitch (dyke dept.)

My 73yr-old memory banks have just kicked in...
When I was a child in the 1940s, out in the boondocks ~provinces of the US,
where mentioning these things was a great taboo, along about 10-11 years of
age I learned from schoolmates the terms "dyke", short form of "morphodite
~morphodike" as a generic for "homosexual" (these of course are guesses at
the spelling-- they were strictly spoken forms). Where my chums would have
learnt the term, I have no idea. With later learning, of course, this
proved clearly to be a corruption of "hermaphrodite", the common euphemism
for "homosexual" (For ex., I've encountered it many a time in 19th C. Dutch
ethnologies dealing with Indonesian tribes). Thus it strikes me that trying
to find some ancient proto-origin for the term may be an exercise in
futility.

I'm surprised no other American participant here has recalled this, but
maybe you're all a bunch of youngsters (i.e. younger than me) ;-), and I
wouldn't expect our European friends to be familiar with ancient American
schoolboy slang. And likely over the last 60-plus years, and given the
frightening sophistication about sexual matters among modern-day American
kids, the source "morphodi(tk)e" simply fell into disuse somewhere along the
way.