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From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.language.latin
Subject: Re: [try it on for size] --- this was so common in the movies of
 the 1950s, 1960s
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Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2024 19:01:25 +0000
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 Ar an ceathrú lá déag de mí na Samhain, scríobh Christian Weisgerber: 

 > On 2024-11-14, Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> wrote:
 > 
 > >>Origin:        The use of "broad" to refer to a woman dates back to the
 > >>early 20th century, particularly in American slang.
 > >
 > >    Slang sense of "woman" is by 1911, perhaps suggestive of broad 
 > >    hips, but it also might trace to American English abroadwife, word 
 > >    for a woman (often a slave) away from her husband.
 > 
 > That's the sort of thing you look up in _Green’s Dictionary of Slang_
 > https://greensdictofslang.com/
 > ... which unfortunately doesn't provide a definitive answer either
 > in this case.
 > 
 > The slang term is typically rendered as "Braut" into German, and I
 > never gave this any thought because the words are so similar, but
 > now I notice that "Braut" is of course cognate with "bride", so
 > "broad" can't really be connected... unless it's a borrowing from
 > another Germanic language?  But neither German "Braut", nor Dutch
 > "bruid", nor Scandinavian "brud" seem quite right.

There’s not reason it can’t be a borrowing (in that sense) from German or from
Dutch, with it being first attested in the US at a point when the recent German
immigrant proportion of the population was as its highest.

-- 
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)