These words refer to vexatious, fault-finding, abusive and quarrelsome women. Shrew is the most inclusive in the list of faults that it may attribute to such a woman. Because of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew , the word is often used specifically to refer to a henpecking, domineering wife who nags her husband. Scold , now rarely used, emphasizes only one fault to the exclusion of others, referring to someone who is unceasingly fault-finding and who uses harsh, abusive language. While the word often applies to a woman, and may certainly apply to a wife, it is the only word here that is not necessarily restricted to women alone: not able to decide who was the worse scold , his boss at the office or his wife at home. Virago is more like scold than shrew in emphasizing a person given to ill-tempered tirades. Here the word is limited to describing a nosy, sharp-tongued woman whose talk may be harsh and incessant but not necessarily devoted solely to abuse, as is the case with scold : a virago who punished her husband with a constant volley of hysterical chatter. Virago comes from a Latin root referring to a mannish woman, and sometimes this is reflected in the word’s use in reference to a woman of extraordinary size or Amazonian courage: often picturing Judy as a virago of frightening prowess and Punch as a helpless pip-squeak of a man.

With the remaining words, greater disapproval is expressed for more extremely distasteful sorts of women, often outside the context of marriage. Harridan refers specifically to an old woman who is hateful and vicious: harridans who sit bejewelled in their theatre boxes but have never entertained a kind or compassionate sentiment in their entire lives. Vixen , by contrast, suggests animal-like ferocity not commonly associated with advanced age. The word’s other application ?to a female fox ?supplies overtones here of a sleek, cunning woman, perhaps specifically unmarried, who is out for self-aggrandizement at whatever cost to others: a regular vixen who could slink about seductively one moment and lash out with tooth and claw the next. Such a woman who directs her viciousness at males is now often referred to as a castrating female. In more general use, though carrying considerable taboo, is bitch ?another word associated with a female animal. Bitch tends to embrace all the distasteful and vicious qualities of language and behaviour; she could be quite nice at times but a real bitch when she liked. Strangely enough, the word is not as taboo in this application as when used loosely.

Termagant is the fiercest of all these words, emphasizing greater malice and suggesting a greater range of quixotic, bad-tempered, irrational hostility, indicating a woman who vents these qualities upon any who happen to cross her path, whether within or outside the domestic situation: a termagant who stamped into the meeting, pounded on the table and insisted that her denunciation of the chairman be given instant recognition.