In the 1850s fish became an insulting term for vagina. A fish-market was a term for a brothel. In current U.S. gay slang fish is a contemptuous term for both a woman and a vagina, and to have a fish dinner is to have sex with a woman. In U.S. and Canadian male prison slang fish is a term for a new inmate; in this usage the connotations of freshness and newness are in striking opposition to those of slimy, smelly flesh when the word is used of a woman and/or her genitalia.
For five hundred years, cheesecake meant a cake or tart made of cheese or curdled milk, eggs and sugar. During World War II, it joined the long list of slang words which refer to women as edible and sexually available to men. At first, American GIs used the term for photos featuring scantily clad women or "pin-ups." From this sense, cheesecake evolved to mean any sexually attractive young woman.
The term was probably influenced by the U.S. slang use of cheese to mean easy, and the Black American slang use of cake as a euphemism for the vagina.
Another theory about cheesecake is that it derives from the request of photographers to say "cheese" in order to simulate a smile.
In the 19th century, cherry and cherry pie began to be used for an attractive young woman. By the mid-20th century cherry pie came to mean something easily attainable, perhaps influenced by the notion that a young woman who was considered attractive was sexually promiscuous, i.e. a ripe fruit ready for picking and (male) consumption. This probably influenced the development of cherry as a euphemism for the hymen and a female virgin.
Contempt for virginity in a male can be seen in the 20th century military slang use of cherry for a new recruit -- a young man who has yet to be "blooded." Cherry was also adopted in the 1950s as a gay slang term for a virgin who had not yet been anally penetrated.
Combines the image of woman-as-food and woman-as-empty-container-to be-filled-or-plugged in one four-letter word. Although also used of an attractive male, its development explains why it is more frequently used of a woman. In Olde English, dish denoted a broad shallow vessel; in the 15th century, dish denoted food ready to be served. In Antony and Cleaopatra Shakespeare made used of these two senses: "I know that a woman is a dish for the gods." The 1811 edition of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines dishclout (dishcloth) as "a dirty, greasy woman."
The original meaning of honey denoted the sweet, viscid, yellow fluid from the nectar of flowers. By the 14th century it was a term of endearment for a sweetheart, applied to both sexes but mostly to a female. In the 18th century, honey-pot was a decidedly female-specific slang term for vagina. Later, honey-pot came to denote a woman -- another term which describes a woman as a container or vessel. Honey became slang for semen.
In the 14th century, meat referred to the flesh of animals used for food. Perhaps because of the association with the word flesh (used of wife and husband to express closeness created by marriage), meat became a slang term for the human body -- only rarely the male -- as an instrument for sexual pleasure. It also became slang for the vagina and, very rarely, the penis. The Dictionary of Historical Slang lists several phrases, some still in use, which evoke an image of women as dead flesh, carved up, minced by a butcher and served for male consumption. A bit of meat meant a prostitute, fresh meat was a prostitute new to the trade, hot meat was used of a fast or loose woman, a prostitute and for the vagina. Raw meat referred either to a prostitute named in the sexual act or was a general term for any woman. A meat house was a brothel. A meat market was a term for a rendezvous of prostitutes and is now used by feminists to disparage beauty queen contests.
Over the centuries tit has denoted a breast, a nipple, a small animal, a horse, a fool, a girl, a woman and a whore. As a name for a small horse, tit came to be used as a term for inferior an horse, which led to its figurative use for a fool (defined in the 1811 edition of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as "a foolish fellow; also one who has never seen his wife's (cunt)." Towards the end of the 16th century, tit denoted a young woman. Until the 18th century tit had positive connotations but by the next century it had pejorated and was used for a woman of loose character, a hussy. At around the same time tit became another word for the vulva, perhaps an abbreviation of tit-bit -- yet another word which suggests a woman is a small, quick-to-consume, edible morsel for a man.
The use of tit meaning breast is an unrelated word, being derived by a form of teat.
Next time: cupcake, crumpet, tart, mutton; sugar. spice and everything nice