Not too long ago at all, "pimp" was still the kind of word most folks didn't throw around in good company. Pimps, after all, have a nasty image: bad guys squeezing cash from hookers. But "pimp" has experienced a surprising image change. In a matter of months, the word has gone from a bad noun to a good verb, which broadly means to embellish or champion. Four of the milestones in the rise of the word:

March 4, 2004: "Pimp" got its big mass-media break when MTV launched the rapper-driven Pimp My Ride, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers to a show about customizing cars.

Jan. 4, 2005: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that "pimp" was not necessarily negative. The decision came from a case in which daredevil Evel Knievel sued an ESPN Web site for captioning a photo of him, his wife and another woman, "Evel Knievel proves that you're never too old to be a pimp." Knievel called it defamatory, but the judges disagreed, opining that the word can actually be "intended as a compliment."

March 5, 2006: It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, from the movie Hustle & Flow, took the Oscar for best original song. The sketchy lyrics ("In my eyes I done seen some crazy thangs in the streets / Gotta couple hoes workin on the changes for me / But I gotta keep my game tight like Kobe on game night / Like takin from a ho don't know no better, I know that ain't right'') were eclipsed by a catchy hook.

May 28, 2006: The New York Times headlined a story about high-end barbecues "Pimp My Grill." It became one of the linguistically conservative newspaper's most e-mailed stories.

- Denver Post/tbt*