lady of pleasure

lady of pleasure (plural ladies of pleasure)

1. 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.