The blushes of the 1936 Roget's

[truepenny]

The Virtu, Chapter 2: 50 ms pages, 11,248 words
Running total: 79 ms pages, 17,674 words

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My primary thesaurus is a battered copy of the 1936 Roget's. I adore this thesaurus because it's a tool more for people who love words than those who feel their vocabulary is insufficient, but it does have its foibles.

Case in point: today I needed, never mind why, another synonym for slut. I had whore already; wanton was wrong, as were the others that I could think of off the top of my head: jade, jezebel, doxy. Knowing full well I was merely exercising bloody-mindedness, I reached for my Roget's. No entry for prostitute, nor for whore, nor for jade, jezebel, or doxy.

So I did the sensible thing, and used WordPerfect's thesaurus tool to look up whore. It promptly gave me harlot, and I just as promptly emended my text. And then, out of sheer perverse curiosity, I looked up harlot in Roget's.

harlot, n. prostitute, strumpet, courtesan. See BAD WOMAN, LIBERTINE.

Now, I ask you, how am I supposed to resist an entry in a thesaurus for BAD WOMAN?

BAD WOMAN.---Nouns. bad woman, Jezebel, hell-cat, hellhag, witch, hag, harridan, strumpet, jade, drab, trull, trollop, harlot, wanton, Cyprian, adulteress, courtesan; procuress, bawd; Delilah, Messalina; hussy (sometimes playful), minx (usually playful).
See also LIBERTINE.---Antonyms. See GOOD WOMAN.

This is what happens when I let myself get ensnared by the thesaurus.

We head off to LIBERTINE, with a quick stop along the way at GOOD WOMAN.

GOOD WOMAN.---Nouns. good woman, ministering angel, heaven's noblest gift; "Earth's noblest thing--a woman perfected" (Lowell); goddess, deity, queen, Madonna, virgin, maiden, Una (Faërie Queene).
Antonyms. See BAD WOMAN.

My thesaurus has a virgin/whore complex.

But LIBERTINE is where it really lets its hair down.

LIBERTINE.---Nouns. libertine, voluptuary, rake, roué (F.), debauchee, deceiver, Lothario, Don Juan.
harlot, courtesan, strumpet, prostitute, unfortunate, frail (slang), broad (slang), wanton, demimondaine, lorette (F.), cocotte (F.), pick-up, wren (slang), chippy (U. S. slang), streetwalker, woman of the town, woman of easy virtue, fille de joie (F.), Cyprian, demirep, white slave; Jezebel, Messalina, Delilah, Thias, Phryne, Aspasia, Lais.
mistress, paramour, kept woman, hetaera or hetaira (ancient Greece), concubine, doxy (archaic or dial.), leman (archaic), sultana, bona roba (It.).
procurer, pimp, pander, mackerel (archaic), maquereau (F.: slang); procuress (fem.), bawd, conciliatrix (L.), entremetteuse (F.).
See also DRUNKENNESS, IMPURITY.---Antonyms. See GOOD MAN, GOOD WOMAN, PURITY.

(The entry under GOOD MAN, you will not be surprised to learn, has no words listed which have anything to do with chastity or the lack thereof, and although BAD MAN (the antonym, of course, of GOOD MAN) does have wanton--with the notation usually fem.--libertine, and debauchee, it does not include Don Juan or Lothario, and most of the entry is focused on other kinds of "badness," such as stealing, bullying, wasting money, or being from the lower classes. It's not just a thesaurus, it's an anthropological artifact!)

And now, drunk on words, I'm going to find some lunch.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When I was a freshman in high school marching band, we had to play for the football games. Bo-ring. Especially with a team that held the state record for longest losing streak(0-45 at the beginning of the year, 0-54 by the end). So between songs we had a game going in the flute section, where we had a pat-clap-snap-snap rhythm going, and on the snap-snaps you had to come up with a synonym for prostitute. Many, oh, many was the discussion I had with my section leader about whether foreign terms were permitted and which terms implied that you took money for it vs. giving it away for free.

Ahhh, those were the days.