doll

   Used by mainly American speakers to a woman, who in modem times is very likely to object to the term. This may well be because she would recognize the definition of the slang term given in Chapman’s Dictionary of American Slang as an apt one: ‘a conventionally pretty and shapely young woman, especially a curly, blue-eyed blonde, whose function is to elevate the status of a male and inspire general lust.’ The more recent term for such a girl, though it is seldom used in direct address, is ‘bimbo’. ‘Doll’ of course refers to the representation of a baby or child with which little girls act out their parental fantasies. The word derives from the proper name ‘Dorothy’, the 1 for r substitution being evidenced in other pairs such as Mary - Moll (via Mall), Harry - Hal. ‘Doll’ is used as a vocative on its own, as in The Sophomore, by Barry Spacks and Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes, or in the fuller form ‘baby doll’. The latter is used by a middle-class American man to a woman friend in The Tunnel of Love, by Peter de Vries. There is another example in Daughters of Mulberry, by Roger Longrigg. St Urbain’s Horseman, by Mordecai Richler, has a Canadian Jewish woman using ‘doll’ to her daughter-in-law, in what is clearly meant to be a friendly way. ‘Doll’ used as a vocative in the Shakespeare plays, along with ‘mistress Doll’, ‘good Doll’, is always addressed to Doll Tearsheet, who is also called mistress Dorothy on two occasions in Henry the Fourth Part Two. In One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, by Robert Gover, ‘doll’ is the head-word in the unusual vocative group ‘sweet loving baby sugar doll’. It is also unusual in being addressed to a man, the speaker being a prostitute.