"Slut" is "fraught"

Last night, Chris and I were working with Jessica to try to get her post about the "slut parade" onto the blog site. (Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful, but you can read Jessica's great posts if you go to "Edit Posts.") It started me thinking about recent use of the word "slut." (Etymology: Middle English, slutte.) It's creeping into general usage, but still only in certain ways. In my village in NZ, there's a cafe called Spice, where a lot of us run into each other having coffee in the morning. Recently, a new cafe opened across the road. One morning, I didn't show up at Spice, and a female friend e-mailed me, "I didn't see you at Spice this morning. Did you sleep late, or have you become a coffee slut?" In other words, had I quickly changed my allegiance to the new place? In that context, it was fine and funny -- from a friend about coffee. And I can call myself a slut in some contexts, e.g., "I'm such a slut. I bought his book and chatted him up, hoping he'd donate to the Library Foundation." However, it would be inappropriate if it were used more generally, or by a man, or by someone I didn't know well. The word "slut" is "fraught" -- which is a perfectly fine word we seem to be using more often. (Etymology: Middle English, past participle of fraughten, to load, as in freight.) Either use is fine, but in the past, a situation was fraught with something, as in "the night was fraught with drama," or "the incident was fraught with danger." Now, more often, we just use it alone, as "mother-daughter relationships are fraught." We all know what that means -- loaded with baggage.