Bitch
In 780BC, the poet Semonides of Amorgos deployed an epithet that would have remarkable longevity. He depicted women as “bitches who stray everywhere, always yapping. A man cannot stop her by knocking out her teeth with a stone. Ceaselessly, she continues barking.” Academic studies have shown that men who instinctively associate women with animals are more likely to commit sexual assault or violence against them. Mel Gibson and OJ Simpson both used the word about their girlfriends before attacking them. Yet the word has become worryingly normalised: between 1997 and 2008 the use of the word on television trebled, and is a common term of abuse against women on social media.