„Honestly, I can’t wait to have grandkids and spoil them—but I don’t want to be called „Granny.'“ (overheard on the No. 96 tram in Melbourne)
„Honestly, I can’t wait to have grandkids and spoil them—but I don’t want to be called „Granny.'“ (overheard on the No. 96 tram in Melbourne)
„I love it. It’s not the word that needs to change, it’s our culture.“ (Deborah, proud granny)
From its debut in the early 1600s, „granny“ has been more than an affectionate term for grandma—and a cursory glance at its history tells a depressingly familiar story.
First, the instability and decline of words associated with women. „Granny“ joins a long list of words, particularly for older women, that that have acquired negative meanings—spinsters were originally spinners; sluts were untidy people; slags and shrews were rogues; scolds were poets; bimbos were men, and so on. Many started life referring to men, but quickly narrowed to female application—and with this sexual specification came further decline.
Right from the start, grannies were also people engaged in trivial (often self-serving) chatter; in other words, grannies were gossips, tell-tales and nosy parkers. In the 1700s, more negative meanings piled on—grannies became fussy, indecisive or unenterprising persons, and in many places stupid as well.
The online crowdsourced Urban Dictionary now has a flourishing of additional disparaging senses for „granny“ that have yet to make it into more mainstream collections.
In sport, grannies refer to those who perform poorly, or they’re a kind of dead leg injury (which leaves you „hobbling around like an old granny for the rest of the day“).
Tellingly, the negative uses of granny have never been restricted to women—one 19th-century dictionary defines „granny“ as „a simpleton: used of both sexes.“ It’s another telling asymmetry in our lexicon. Terms for women are insulting when used of men („Dad, don’t be such a granny“), but terms designating men when used of women have little or no affront. If you were to call a women a grampa or an old man, there’s really no abuse—it just seems odd.
Unflattering „granny“ compounds are plentiful in English: a „granny knot“ is one that’s inexpertly tied, while „granny gear“ is an extremely low first gear.
