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The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the first attested use of minx is in reference to a pet dog (1542), although by the later sixteenth century it had assumed its current significations: "a pert, sly, or boldly flirtatious young woman; a lewd or wanton woman; (also) a prostitute; a mistress". The pejorative use is nearly as early as the lightly critical. The playful application to a very young girl is last to appear. In the use of the term mink, here of a bold girl, reference would have been to the semi-aquatic mammal Mustela vison, somewhat larger than its European counterpart M. lutreola. The histories of minx and grifter illustrate the commonplace that words tend to move far from their origins, as various as these may be. Shifts in valence as much as in semantics - movement on the social scale and, consequently, on scales of judgment - are recurrent phenomena.