Labels are for jeans and jars. And they're used on people too... But what do they mean and why do we use them?
Labels can feel like oppressive stereotypes, or they can be a source of pride and comfort. Finding a group to identify with is sometimes an important part of the process of defining who you are--but defining anyone solely by the way they look, what they believe, or something they like or do is usually an insult to the many dimensions that make up a person.
What's in a name? A LOT! Have a look at where some labels came from and where they're going...

SNOB:
Snobs look down at you: They seem to think they're better or smarter; maybe their parents are loaded or maybe they know a lot about something. But the term actually originated as a putdown for social climbers, people aspiring to look down at somebody else.
"Snob" is believed to be an abbreviation for sine nobelitate, Latin for "no aristocratic title." In early 19th century England, a new "middle" class entered the social scene--and began sending kids to college. The universities, up till then aristocrats only, weren't too keen on accommodating the new-rich and so, according to legend, set them apart by inscribing "s.nob" next to their names.
Meanwhile, an English writer named William Makepeace Thackeray used "snob" so often in an 1840 series of articles satirizing the English obsession with social status that he is officially credited with originating the word. Whatever the source, the term quickly reached general usage to describe anyone who had succeeded in climbing the social ladder--usually by copying the manners of the upper classes and seeking out their company.
At some point in the 20th century, snobbishness became a characteristic of the upper classes themselves. And the word gradually became associated with the superior life that money can sometimes buy. Nowadays, calling oneself a snob can simply mean that you recognize "quality"--and are proud of it. Film snobs are disclosing that they know more about the movies than most people, while html snobs don't see why everyone hasn't learned the programming language by now.

WHITE TRASH:
Nowadays the term "white trash" might bring to mind the foul-mouthed guests of "The Jerry Springer Show," with their bad hair, narrow-minded politics and trailer park neighborhoods...just some of the stereotypes associated with poor, white, non-urban Americans. But the phrase was around long before TV.
It was first used in the mid-1800's to describe poor white people who didn't own land. As a social class, they were regarded by other whites as economically worthless and expendable as garbage--indeed, "white trash."
Calling someone "white trash" is still a putdown that means low-class. (It irks some blacks, too, because of the implication that they are the "regular" trash.) But it can also be a source of pride, sort of a working class badge of honor for "real" white Americans, living without pretense and embracing their roots without shame.
By now the label has also firmly rooted itself in pop culture, in a tongue-in-cheek celebration involving everything from recipes to mullets. Punk rockers and stars like Kid Rock have embraced white trash culture, and now's there's even a Trailer Park Lounge and Grill in New York City.

STUD:
The female origins of "stud" may come as a surprise to all the men out there who aspire to the term. While "studs" nowadays are virile and attractive in a masculine, athletic way, the word probably comes from the German word for "mare"--and the Middle English "stod," basically a place for breeding mares.
Hundreds of years later, the breeding definition still applies, but the gender has changed. Nowadays, a stud is a stallion, or a place where stallions are kept. Retiring racehorses are put "at stud" to be bred post-career, for example. (Mares can be put at stud, but they're never referred to as "studs.")
At some point in the early 20th century, "stud" was extended to male humans as well--especially the desirable ones with lots of sexual partners, but not always. Sometimes the sexual references were less overt, such as in the Beat lingo of 1950s, where a stud was just a "guy."
Just how sexual the term is and whether or not a stud is a sex object or a sexual aggressor is far from settled. Websites and magazines advertise men as studs to rent for money. But then there's the Michigan college student threatened with sexual harassment charges for using the term in a paper.

FAGGOT:
"Faggot" is the classic anti-gay slur. Most people think it's a funny coincidence that the word also happens to mean "bundle of sticks." But there may be an ancient and awful connection between the two definitions: During the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, homosexual prisoners were forced to collect wood for the Inquisition's witch-burning fires--and their own bodies were then used to fuel the pyres when the flames died out.
The word's journey from Latin to Modern English is hard to trace; along the way "faggot" was, among other things, a reprimand for boys who were "sissies" and a putdown for women.
By the early 20th century, the term (by then usually shortened to "fag") had made it into American prison slang in reference to men who dressed in women's clothes. (And into British English to mean "cigarette"--possibly because cigarettes were considered effeminate by cigar- and pipe-smokers.)
"Fag" has remained a criticism of men with stereotypical female traits--long hair in the 1960s, an earring on one side in the '80s--as much as of actual gay behavior. It has also spawned expressions like "artfag" (a name-dropping, wannabe artist who is not necessarily gay) that play on the stereotype of gay men being sensitive and artistic.
"Fag" is still a direct insult when spoken with hostile intent to a homosexual man. But it has also morphed into a more generalized insult, to the point where kids and sometimes adults use it to refer to someone they find wimpy, not "manly" or just plain not good enough.

PRUDE:
In pre-revolutionary France, "prode femmes" were proud, wise, virtuous women. It was a respectful and flattering term. By the time "prude" showed up in the English language in the early 1700s, however, there was nothing kind about it anymore.
Women, it turned out, could be TOO wise, too proper--for men's liking, at least, especially if it meant they weren't interested in sex.
"Prude" has been used ever since--not just in English but German and French too--against people perceived as uptight, usually women with proper manners or conservative ideas about sex (although now men are called "prudes" too).
Modern-day "prudes" also come in the form of government officials or activists campaigning against premarital sex, pornography, prostitution or homosexuality.

JOCK:
The "jocks" of today are all about sports, but in its beginnings, "jock" (like "jack" in English) was simply Scottish for "guy."
"Jock" was a catchall phrase for men performing any number of odd jobs (hence the expression "jack of all trades"). With time and the industrial revolution, "jock" became short for "jockey" and came to mean anyone who operated machinery or rode a horse.
In 1874, the Bike Athletic Company of Tennessee decided to create an undergarment "suspensory" for the men who were being jarred while "jockeying" through the cobblestone streets of Boston on bicycles. The suspensory quickly came to be known by a more common slang name: the jock strap. Men started using it for support during all types of athletic activity, not simply bike riding.
During the early epoch of male college sports in the 1920s and '30s, "jocks" were the people who most vigorously supported athletics--especially the sporty university boys concerned with the masculinity that making the team might confer.
The word was used in a tongue-in-cheek way--people have always poked fun at anyone so concerned with being macho--but being a jock wasn't so bad. Jocks were generally considered genial and, at least in mainstream media, always "got the girl."
That started changing with the counterculture wars of the 1960s and '70s, when sports such as football came to represent all that was militaristic, imperialistic and rapacious in our society. After the Columbine school shooting in 1999, when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attributed some of their murderous rage to the torment they'd reported receiving at the hands of school athletes, anti-jock sentiment finally seemed to hit the mainstream.
Today, jock has lost its hazy innocence. While it is still used to describe someone who is simply into sports, the jock we've come to love to hate is overly obsessed with them, tends to malign artistic and intellectual endeavors and may on occasion like to use brute strength to bully others.

DORK:
"Dork" is something like "geek" and "nerd," but "dork" doesn't have the brainy connotation of the other two. "Dorks" are considered socially awkward, uncool and often physically inept--but not necessarily supersmart.
Legend has it that "dork" appeared in the slang of American teens in the early 1960s. Originally it meant penis--a combination of the word "dick" and "dirk" (slang for a small knife). A decade later, "dork" had come to mean a clumsy, foolish person and it's used in this sense most often today.
"Dork" is a playful word--and so is "dorky." Clothes, names, parents, younger siblings or even friends can be dorky. Single-minded but harmless devotion can make you a dork; "band dorks," for example, spend all their time practicing and hanging out with other musicians.
There's plenty of dork pride to be found on the web these days. Just take a look at sites like the Dork Page, and Dark Dorks(a gothy variation). There is a dorky comic book publisher (Dork Storm Press) and even a tongue-in-cheek quiz to determine your dorkiness.

STONER:
Way back, as early as 14th century England, "stone blind" or "stone drunk" meant being as blind or as drunk as you could get. "Stoned"--the state of being very intoxicated by drugs or alcohol--probably grew from that.
But it wasn't until the 1970s that anyone was ever called a "stoner," a term that still means about the same thing: someone whose life revolves around getting high from smoking marijuana.
"Stoner" arrived when marijuana stopped being just a "hippie" thing and came into wider use. Stoners didn't necessarily have any connection to the utopian, peace-loving, communal-living hippie values that had spread the use of pot earlier. But they did have the reputation for being very laid-back that they have today.
Stoners are stereotypically harmless but useless: Not liable to steal anything like a crack user might be expected to do, for example, and not hurting anybody--but not contributing much, either.(Debates continue to rage about how addictive or dangerous pot is, but there is clear evidence of harm to young people who are still developing physically and mentally.)
Lately, popular culture seems to be obsessed with everything associated with the mellow 1970s, including marijuana madness. Now there's even "stoner rock": basically '70s-style music with a modern, experimental twist.

HO:
There are zero putdowns in the English language for sexually promiscuous men, but so many ways to say that a woman is bad by virtue of being "loose" (slut, bitch, whore, just to name a few). And now hip-hop culture has brought us "ho."
The word came into the mainstream through rap music of the '80s and '90s. "She ain't nothing but another ho..." rapped KRS-1 in 1990--sounding very tame, actually, next to groups like NWA, 2 Live Crew and, later, Eminem.
"Ho" comes from the Southern pronunciation of the word "whore." But dropping the "r" sound is also supposed to dull the insult (sort of the way "nigga" takes some of the racial slur out of "nigger"). We're not calling you a whore, the argument goes; that's just what we call women.
Whatever the offense taken, or not taken, there is no shortage of misogyny in the word's illustrious past. In the flashy gangsta rap videos of the '80s and '90s, the ultimate sign of success was a backdrop of near-naked "bitches and ho's" jiggling on yachts and nice cars. Some rap artists really ran with the pimp-fantasy theme, all the way to lyrics about keeping their women in line with a "slap."
And over the years, the word has stretched to fit most things you could say against a woman--or anyone. Sightings include "hoe" (ugly woman), "ho-bitch" (dislikable woman) and "hobeast" (almost likeable, but too much of a wannabe slut). Not to mention "garden tool" (get it? from "hoe") as a general term for a woman.
As some people see it, time and changing music styles have taken the word "ho" down a notch; it's funnier now, and sometimes even friendly.
Some women in hip-hop are not so sure, however. They have chosen to keep the pressure on--ever since Queen Latifah made her first call to action in 1989, rapping: "Every time I hear a brotha call a girl a bitch or a ho/Tryin' to make a sista feel low/You know all of that's gotta go."
Hoes Wit Attitude took it a step further in the 90s, using their own name to make their point with the same sense of irony and humor behind Missy Elliott when she calls herself a "crazy ho."

RETARD: "Retard" means "slow" in French. When the word came into common English use in the 20th century to describe mentally retarded people, it was offered as a kinder alternative to medieval words like "idiot" and "fool" and images of pitiful, sometimes dangerous, social rejects.
Officially, mentally retarded people have low IQs and trouble learning certain skills. "Retard" as an insult is a comment on someone's intelligence--usually sparked by something small, like not getting a joke or saying something corny. The implication is that you are not just "slow" or "behind" at that moment, but in a permanent sort of way.
The word "retard" also has a patronizing effect--a common complaint from mentally retarded people is that they're treated like children--and that same inferior feeling also carries over to the insult.
Used as a joke, on the other hand, the word "retard" has lost its sting to the point where it can mean the opposite of slow and stupid. The word is making appearances lately on a range of super-sarcastic websites, cartoons and fanzines.

GEEK:
Although in Australia a "geek" is a "peek," as in a quick look at something, most of the rest of us know geeks as a special breed of socially awkward people with a passion for technology.
The first "geeks" preceded computers by a century or so, however. They were 19th century carnival tricksters who performed bizarre acts such as biting the heads off live chickens or snakes. The special draw of these sideshow routines was the chance to see man in his wild state--all the more raw and exciting if the performer had deformities to display. (Check out Katherine Dunn's 1989 novel "Geek Love," about a traveling freak show family bioengineering their own mutations to keep the business going.)
In the 20th century, the head-biter geek morphed into the bookish geek--just as hard to talk to and just as much on the margins of polite society. Geeks (and "nerds") were people with pocket protectors and other hyper-practical accessories who spent their time on math or science problems and showed little interest in other people (or their own appearance).
For Classy Freddy Blassie, a WWF wrestling manager in the 1980s, the ultimate insult was: "You pencil-necked geek!"
Then came the internet revolution--and suddenly being a geek was not such a bad thing. In some circles, geek is now simply a synonym for "hacker" or even "Silicon Valley engineer."
The revenge of the geeks is fully underway! Lately, calling someone a "geek" is just as likely to be a compliment as a putdown.

PUNK:
The style and attitude of punk rock--mohawks, anarchy and leather jackets--are what most people think of when they use the word "punk." But back in 16th century England, a "punk" was a prostitute. By the 1920s, "punk" had developed into a slur for men who were the willing or unwilling submissive sex partners of other men in jails. As punks tended to be on the younger side, the word's meaning morphed into "juvenile delinquent." When the '50s rolled around, people hurled the term at young, leather-jacketed street toughs and hot-rodders.
In the 1970s, "punk" was co-opted by two young New York fanzine creators who welcomed the notion of being considered delinquents. They wrote about the new music that was emerging in reaction to the monster rock that ruled the airwaves, and named their zine "Punk." The music--from bands like the Ramones, Blondie and the diverse set of "street rockers" that coalesced around New York's CBGB--came to be known as punk, too.
From New York, "punk" music spread to England, where it became associated with the politics of anarchy and developed an aggressive aesthetic sensibility, thanks in no small part to the Sex Pistols. Punk became a revolt against conventional life and politics as well as music. This is where the classic punk look developed--safety pins, torn clothing and dyed, spiked hair--as an in-your-face attack on the mainstream.
These days, "punk" refers to a look, an attitude, an ethos, a style of music or a person who seems to espouse any of these. It can be hurled as an insult to label someone as degenerate or antisocial, or it can be worn as a badge of pride. Beyond that, however, the definition of punk has become confused (it can be a pretty touchy subject) because of its commercialization and the development of so many kinds of punk music and communities: racist skinheads, non-racist straight-edge skinheads and crusty punks, just to name a few.
For more about punk as an art movement, check out Greil Marcus' "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century" and for more about the birth of the music scene, see "Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk."

DYKE: A "dyke" is a female homosexual or a low wall built to prevent floods (this second kind is also spelled "dike"). Some people suspect there's a connection between the two definitions: that women who were not interested in having sex with men might once have been compared, with disgust, to a stone barrier.
On the other hand, Boudicca, a Celtic warrior queen in Britain in the first century AD, could have inspired "dyke." Or the 19th century black women who dug ditches in the American south and were known as "bulldikes" (or even the black male laborers of that time called "bull dicks" by white plantation owners).
It's all mostly a game of guessing. Lesbians by any name were mentioned very little in print until about 1920, so it's hard to say when the word "dyke" hit spoken English.
When it did hit, it meant--and still often means--a particularly "butch" lesbian: with stereotypically "masculine" clothes and appearance. ("Butch" is actually about a lot more than looks; it was a full way of life in the underground lesbian culture of the early to mid-20th century.) In African-American slang of the 1920s, to be "diked up" was to be "dressed up" and came to refer to women dressing butch.
In the '60s, activists fighting discrimination against gay people got their first mainstream notice. And after that, the word "dyke" acquired, for some lesbians, a sense of pride.
Like lots of names people call each other, the word changes a lot with context. Shouted at someone in school or on the street, it's mean--and is meant to make a girl or woman think she is not being friendly enough to men. As a less-bookish-sounding alternative to "lesbian," it's mostly just descriptive.
Used by present-day lesbian activists and media--Dyke TV or Dykes to Watch Out For, for example--it's descriptive, but with a slightly rowdy we're-here, get-used-to-it edge

SLUT:
People usually use the word "SLUT" to put down a woman for being sexually promiscuous--whether she is or not. It's sometimes used to taunt females who have been raped, and to embarrass girls who go through puberty before their peers. "Slut" is a great example of the double standard that encourages boys to get as much action as possible, while girls are supposed to be virginal and "good." Usually, when you call a guy sexually promiscuous, he's flattered. "Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation," by Leora Tanenbaum, is about the experience of being a called a "slut" in school, and how it affected the author and 50 other women who were similarly labeled.
FREAK:
"Freak!" is not really what you want to hear when you're trying to blend into a crowd. But for someone interested in being unique, it can be a compliment.
Starting in the early 1800s, freak shows were a popular form of entertainment that literally involved putting weirdness on display. People who had extreme medical conditions--obesity, dwarfism, hairiness--could work in freak shows while people paid money to gawk at them.
In the 1970s, the dance music hit "Le Freak" helped launch the disco craze, but also poked fun at the over-the-top devotion of nightclubbers.
Being called a "music freak" or a "computer freak" has a certain charm because the idea is that while you may be abnormally passionate about one special thing, you're probably very good at it. Like "Jesus freak," however, it also might contain a subtle putdown about being so fervent about something.
If you are not any of those kinds of freaks, maybe you are an average angsty teen like the TV kids on "Freaks and Geeks." Or maybe your freakiness just flares up once in a while without warning, like a freak snowstorm in summer.

GOTH:
The word "Goth" covers a lot of ground and almost two millennia: from the marauding Germanic tribes of the second century, to pointy European cathedrals and haunting American literature, all the way to the "dark" fashion and music that still gets confused with devil worship.
The Gothic architecture that evolved in Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries--vaulted ceilings, gargoyles, pointed arches--did actually get its name from the Germanic tribes. Italian Renaissance writers apparently thought those cathedrals were ugly and chose to blame them on the barbarians who had done battle with the Roman Empire about a thousand years earlier.
But what better setting than a Gothic-style medieval castle for the dark, scary Gothic literature that developed much later, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and "Dracula"?
Ghoulish encounters with vampires and other living dead gave the characters of Gothic literature a bad case of anti-social behavior--a stigma (or sign of prestige) that endures in modern Goth culture: moody, punk-inspired music, first presented by Siouxsie & The Banshees and Bauhaus, and the black-and-white death tones of Goth fashion.
One of the latest blows to the Goth reputation followed the Columbine High School shootings in 1999; the killers were reported to have worn dark trench coats and listened to angsty rocker Marilyn Manson. Wrongly perceived as Goth, they were explained away as worshippers of evil--and members of the Goth community weren't pleased.

PREP:
"Prep" is short for "preparatory." But unless you are doing "kitchen prep" before making a meal or getting ready for a test, the word usually refers to people who look like they could belong to the elite world of American preparatory schools.
The old-time New England prep schools--Andover, Phillips Exeter, Hotchkiss, etc.-- modeled themselves on English "public" schools like Eton (where Prince William graduated and Prince Harry still studies). The idea was to prepare the children of wealthy, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) families for top colleges and life in the upper crust of society.
At this point, you don't have to be a WASP or travel to New England to go to prep school, and you certainly don't need to go to "prep" school to be labeled a "prep." Nowadays, it's more about how you look: understated but classic, wearing khakis maybe, and always lots of cotton. "Preppy" fashion is famously low-key because it is inspired by a class of people who don't care to flaunt their wealth. (Except for the not-so-subtle message of wearing clothes that suggest constant skiing, tennis and sailing--and the occasional loud plaid or hot pink.)
When the term "preppy" developed in the 1960s, it was with a mix of awe and annoyance. What was not to like about the clean-cut looks and the tastes of the "old money" prep-school crowd? But they were so insular, so spoiled...
Preppy pride soared in the conservative '80s, when Lisa Birnbach published "The Official Preppy Handbook," which extolled the joys of living among the best and brightest while dressed in navy blue and kelly green. Birnbach was kind of kidding, but a backlash followed with books like "101 Uses for a Dead Preppie" and the "I Hate Preppies Handbook."
Preps and their trappings have made a lot of enemies along the way. "The Catcher in the Rye"'s Holden Caulfield railed against the "fakes" at his New England prep school and ran away to the less stifling confines of New York City. Hip-hop's embrace of Tommy Hilfiger and other preppy brands has always been part poking fun at the status quo, part appreciation of the quality.
Meanwhile, there always seems to be a preppy fashion moment around the corner...

GHETTO:
Nowadays, "ghetto" is usually associated with urban, predominantly African-American slums and the hip-hop stars that grew up in them. But the "ghetto" story goes way back.
In Europe and the Middle East in the 14th and 15th centuries, Jewish people were forced to move to segregated neighborhoods under pressure from Catholic and Islamic authorities. These districts got a name with the establishment of an officially segregated Jewish neighborhood in Venice, Italy in 1516. It was called "the Ghetto," which literally means "foundry," because it was built on the site of a metal casting works.
Other Jewish ghettos sprang up around Europe later. They were usually overcrowded with unsanitary conditions and their residents' movements were restricted outside of the ghetto's walls. Abolished in the 19th century, Jewish ghettos returned to Europe under Hitler, but this time as holding places for Jews before sending them off to concentration camps.
Modern ghettos haven't usually been Jewish but they are always dominated by a single minority group. The communities are poor and working-class; they can be rural (like in South Africa) or urban. Oftentimes they house immigrants who have left home in search of opportunity. That was the case with the earlier American ghettos--such as the Irish and Italian ones of the early 20th century.
Now "ghetto" refers either to a certain district or to someone from a poor urban neighborhood. It can be a term of pride for hip-hop stars who brandish it as a badge of street cred--or just describe life in the 'hood: "Ghetto bird" is a police patrol helicopter, for example, and "ghetto blasters" are the handheld boom boxes so popular on sidewalks in the '80s.
"Ghetto fabulous," which is also the name of an album by rap superstar Mystikal, means going for the gaudy appearance of status without the cash to back it up (like souping up a Chevy Nova with expensive rims and a stereo system). But it also applies to a hip-hop star like Lil' Kim, who can afford the finer things but co-opts the flashy look of the "project princess" (lots of gold, leather and fur) as a means of celebrating her cultural roots.

BITCH:
A bitch is a female dog (any kid on the playground can tell you that) or a female human who, like a dog, will whimper, growl and occasionally bite back. When someone calls a woman a bitch, the message is that she is straying from the quiet, obedient, "feminine" ideal. She is uppity--and needs to be controlled.
First used to describe lady dogs in 1000 A.D., "bitch" was applied to humans about 400 years later. The term has endured the test of time and is still a big favorite for putting a woman in her place. The modern twist is applying it to men. A male bitch is seen as "womanish": weak, whiny and submissive (and more than likely gay).
Like some other really sharp putdowns, "bitch" has been picked apart lately in an effort to remove its sting. In the early '90s, for instance, riot grrl bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear scrawled the word on their skin, screamed it out in song and openly embraced other "bitchy" behaviors, like shouting at their fans. They gave "bitch" its own ironic twist in an attempt to "reclaim" it.
Around the same time, with male hip-hop artists like N.W.A. calling women bitches and hos in their rhymes, female hip-hop artists worked their own magic to diffuse the bitch bomb--most notably Queen Latifah, who demanded to know: "Who you callin' a bitch?" Lil' Kim turned the word on its head once again and proclaimed HERSELF the "Queen Bitch."
Want to embrace your own bitchiness? Read "Getting In Touch With Your Inner Bitch" by Elizabeth Hilts.
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