When "suffragette" was first coined, it was intended as a diminuitive smear for women's liberation activists in the early twentieth century: suffragettes were husbandless hags who dared to want the vote. The women's lib movement was obviously far from perfect (it pretty much only benefited rich white ladies), but what was cool linguistically was that these women immediately stole the word suffragette, put it up on posters, shouted it through the streets, named their political magazine after it, and now most English speakers have entirely forgotten that it was ever meant as a slur.

— Wordslut by Amanda Montell (14%)