Other forms: bimbos
Bimbo is a demeaning word for a young woman treated as attractive and empty-headed. It is an insult, and worth understanding rather than using.
It says as much about the speaker as the subject, since it dismisses a woman's intelligence entirely on the basis of her appearance. Oddly, it began in the 1920s as a word for a stupid man, and shifted to women within a couple of decades. The male form himbo was coined later as a joke. British tabloids used it heavily in the 1980s and 1990s, which is where most of its associations come from.
1nounbimboA young woman regarded as attractive but unintelligent, used as an insult.
“The article dismissed her as a bimbo, which said more about the writer.”
Bimbo is Italian for a small child, a variant of bambino. It entered American theatre slang in 1919 meaning a stupid man, and only in the 1920s did it turn and settle on women.
Italian
bimbo — a child, a male baby
English, today
bimbo
Built from
From Italian bimbo (“a child, a male baby”), variant of bambino (“child”). Originated in Italian American theater, attested 1919, as “stupid, inconsequential man”, by 1920 developed sense of “floozie, attractive and stupid woman”. Popularized in 1920s by Jack Conway of entertainment magazine Variety, who also popularized baloney (“nonsense”) and palooka (“large stupid man”). Revived in popularity in 1980s US political sex scandals.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 34 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word