The Rice University Neologisms Database

A girl (typically lesbian) that appears masculine, especially in her physical build or referring to a girl that dresses in a way to suggest masculinity. The connection to ‘bitch’ is obvious but nuanced. The bitch this word seems to be connected to is one that has undergone both widening and narrowing to effect a notable change in scope. Instead of meaning a woman with a bad attitude or a spiteful female, it came to refer to any manly-looking lesbian women, regardless of attitude. It was thus widened to include the superset of all women and then narrowed to include the subset of women that are lesbian and seem manly. This word has widened further since then by losing the ‘lesbian’ criterion; any manly-looking woman can be called butch regardless of sexual orientation. The initial lesbian requisite probably came from the perception that buff girls played softball and that softball players were lesbian. Geographic variations about meaning exist. To some, butch refers only to lesbians, to others it refers to muscular lesbians and to other it refers to muscular girls.