bawd

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There are plenty of words for bawd (ABBESS, or LADY ABBESS, AUNT, BUTTOCK BROKER,

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A woman who keeps a brothel; a madam.
  2. noun A woman prostitute.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

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Examples

  • In this ridiculous distress stood the British monarch; the prisoner of a bawd, and the life upon whom the nation's hopes were fixed, put in the power of a ruffian. —  The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland
  • Thus had Savage perished by the evidence of a bawd, of a strumpet, and of his mother; had not justice and compassion procured him an advocate, of a rank too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard without being believed. —  The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland
  • "bawd:" Cf. Letter 60, note 14 and Feb. 18, 1712-13. —  The Journal to Stella
  • There are plenty of words for bawd (ABBESS, or LADY ABBESS, AUNT, BUTTOCK BROKER, —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 1
  • Middle French baude ` bold, merry '] ` a procuress'; formerly used of either sex. bawd-strot [fr. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VIII No 3
 

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Bawd has been looked up 262 times, favorited 0 times, listed 11 times, and commented on 0 times.

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

bawdry ·  procurer ·  pander ·  whoremonger ·  cuckoldom ·  bursar ·  catamite ·  pimp ·  time-servers ·  fear-mongering ·  shoegaze ·  gigolo
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (5)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, probably from Old French baud, merry, licentious, from Old Low German bald, bold, merry; see bhel-2 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (4)

  1. Early modern English also baud, from Middle English bawde, baude, in the earliest instance varying with bawdstrot, of which bawd is prob. an abbreviation, being thus (prob.) indirectly, and not, as commonly supposed, directly, derived from the Old French baud, bold, lively, gay. The Old French adjective is not used as a noun, and does not have the sense of the English word. See bawdstrot, and cf. bawdy, bawdy.
  2. from bawd, n.
  3. Also spelled baud; from bawdy, q. v.
  4. Early modern English also baud, perhaps abbreviation from baudrons, or perhaps a variant of Middle English badde, a cat, the name being transferred to the hare.
 

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/bɔd/
by American Heritage

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