Sunday Express Skeleton 15Th December...
Crosswords1 min ago
Would calling a woman who travels with a band 'a groupie' be considered an insult - is it a derogatory term?
No best answer has yet been selected by Khandro. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Why not a roadie, or a wife or girl friend or a journo or sound engineer, or a drummer? Groupies do you-know-what, and I doubt if they'd like an old man coming out with such a term. They might be snowflakes and report you - I hope you have no old history which might come back to bite you.
It always amazes me that nobody seems to have grassed up the old rock bands.
Ahhh ! I'd better avoid it then, Atheist's 'Roadie' sounds safer.
A much younger than I woman friend has been in touch after a longish while, and with her newish partner has been travelling the world with him and the quite famous band.
I want to reply in a light-hearted manner but don't want to offend her.
I think you're on the right track, Khandro. Especially if her partner's there with her. Then again, it might be OK. Then again, perhaps only groupies can call other people groupies, and they might get offended if outsiders co-opt their language. We live in difficult times, love, where common sense, sensitivity and politeness have to be taken into account. End of.
Collins has this to say :-
groupie in British English
(ˈɡruːpɪ )
noun slang
1.
an ardent fan of a celebrity, esp a pop star: originally, often a girl who followed the members of a pop group on tour in order to have sexual relations with them
2.
an enthusiastic follower of some activity
e.g. a political groupie