A web site called “Breaking Stigma” explains that the word “…traces back to the late sixteenth century when they would mark people (with a visible brand or cuts) for certain crimes…” “A great representation of this kind of mark would be within the book, ‘The Scarlet Letter’.”  Stigma is used in current language to indicate a person who is ostracized because of some behavior, crime, medical condition, or anything else that could cause disgrace or forced isolation from others.

This is a term that creates a personal emotional response. I’ve heard it referred to describe “ignorant white farmers” who had their lower faces and necks burned red from exposure to the sun while working their fields. Many of my older relatives matched that description, but they were not ignorant. The “intellectuals” who characterized my relatives as “ignorant” would not have a clue how to plant and grow crops while they nourished themselves on food being produced by “rednecks.”

Regardless of my personal reactions, the term has become, according to Wikipedia, to be “…a derogatory slang term…” My relatives were poor, and they probably didn’t keep up with the literature read by “high society.”My observation is that they were hard working people who knew how to grow crops. That knowledge and skills kept the non-productive “intellectuals” from starving. Of course that didn’t stop high society from demeaning the people working in the fields.

Slate gives a detailed explanation that the origin of this term did not come from “…someone who copies, like a cat, but a jerk prone to imitation.” The article gives references to writers, including Shakespeare, using versions of “copycat.” Constance Harrrison wrote in 1887, “Our boys say you are a copy cat, if you write in anything that’s been already printed.” The term evolved from the word cat being was used in medieval times as an insult based on the idea that cats “…were associated with all sorts of evil and mischief.”