lady of pleasure
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English
[edit]Noun
[edit]lady of pleasure (plural ladies of pleasure)
- A female prostitute or courtesan. [from 17th c.]
- 1683, anonymous author, The London Jilt:
- I instructed her with all those things which a Lady of Pleasure ought to know, for the heaping up a Sum of Money wherewith she may maintain her self during her Old Age.
- 2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex:
- By 1765, a visitor to London noted that prints of celebrated ladies of pleasure were both extraordinarily cheap (‘a few guineas will buy a whole seraglio’) and were issued in huge editions, of three or four thousand at a time.