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Early 20th century
- American slang for a woman dates from the early 20th century, perhaps suggestive of a woman’s hips or possibly from the earlier American English expression an “abroad” wife or woman, signifying an illicit relationship with another woman, perhaps a slave, in the figurative sense of being “overseas” or “abroad”.
idiomorigins.org/origin/broad
In the 1740s, slang first crystallizes into a word with a very specific context and a distinctive range of related meanings, emerging as a word chiefly found in reports of the speech of an underclass of thieves, and beggars, and the itinerants who often associated with them and shared much of the same vocabulary.
Etymology Online offers that beaver in the gynecological sense is British slang dating from 1927, transferred from earlier meaning "a bearded man" (1910), or from the appearance of split beaver pelts.
Dec 18, 2013 · Etymonline: As slang for "young woman" it is first recorded 1927 (in "Elmer Gantry"), supposedly from U.S. black slang. In British use in this sense by c.1940; popularized by Beatniks late 1950s. I have always wondered whether it is related by transference to Spanish "chica" (girl).
Slang sense of "woman" is by 1911, perhaps suggestive of broad hips, but it also might trace to American English abroadwife, word for a woman (often a slave) away from her husband. Earliest use of the slang word suggests immorality or coarse, low-class women.
Jun 1, 2013 · The OED traces this word to the Old Norse “kunta,” meaning women’s genitals. “Cu*t” is the dirty word with the longest history in print. It first appeared around 1230 (some 300 years ...
May 21, 2019 · Around the 17th century, the word came to describe a rude, “rustic” woman; then it became a general insult for women of any kind. Eventually, it narrowed to mean a lewd, brazen woman or...
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Jun 12, 2020 · Broad is a slang term for a woman. It is sexist and connotes that the woman in question is sexually promiscuous. This sense of the word appears in criminal slang in the early twentieth century. The metaphor underlying the sense is uncertain, although there is an early guess that is plausible.
