Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/149

 euphemism for un chameau, q.v.); un lolo (popular); une grue (popular: a kept woman; faire le pied de grue, 'to dance attendance'); une soupeuse (literally 'one who takes supper'; an allusion to the 'cabinets particuliers' of French restaurants); une belle petite (a young and pretty prostitute of the superior class; literally 'a pretty darling'); une pêche à quinze sous (a literary term); une boulevardière (a superior class of prostitute frequenting the boulevards); un camélia (a kept woman; a reference to the heroine of La Dame aux camélias by A. Dumas fils); une lorette (a variety of prostitute named after the Quartier Notre Dame de Lorette, the Paris Pimlico); une petite dame (literally 'a little lady'); une impure (a kept woman; properly 'an unchaste one'); une agenouillée (journalistic); une verticale; une horizontale de grande marque (a fashionable courtezan); une cocotte (a generic term); une pierreuse (a public woman of the lowest grade who plies her hideous trade in houses in course of building, etc.); une chamègue; un bourdon (thieves': literally 'a drone'); une lipète (popular); une magneuse (popular: a woman who depraves herself with members of her own sex. The name is said to be in allusion to a religious community who derived their cognomen from that of their founder, Jeanne Canart, the daughter of Nicholas Colbert, who was the Seigneur de Magneux); une vielle lanterne (popular: an old prostitute; lanterne = window'); une feuille (literally 'a leaf'; the term is one used at the Saumur School of Cavalry); un blanc (literally 'blank' or 'white'; the derivation is somewhat obscure, but the term is a very ancient one for a public woman. Mangeur de blanc is a man who lives upon the earnings of prostitutes and ruins them. Formerly, the expression mettre à blanc was used in the sense of 'to ruin'); une vache (this term in its popular signification merely means 'a woman of indifferent character'; if a prostitute is intended, the expression is une vache a lait, a milch cow); un veau (literally 'a calf'; the phrase is applied to a young prostitute. Cf., 'vache à lait'); une retapeuse (popular); un wagon (popular: a dirty prostitute. Cf., wagon, 'a railway carriage' and un omnibus); une taupe (familiar: literally a mole, an animal that works in the dark; also 'a cunning fox'); une Jeanneton (popular: a chambermaid at an inn); une andre (an old word; see Fourbesque landra); une roulure (popular: a public woman of the lowest description. Rouler signifies 'to roll,' 'to wander,' 'to stroll,' 'to keep going'); une fille de barrière (popular: a prostitute plying her trade at the barriers or gates of the city); une dossière (thieves': literally 'a back'); une rouleuse (familiar: an abandoned woman; literally the name of a species of caterpillar); une paillasse à troufion (a soldier's woman); une paillasse de corps de garde (military: literally 'a guard-room mattress'); une marneuse (popular: a variety of low class prostitute frequenting the river-side; literally 'clayey'); une Louis (a bully's mistress; the allusion is to the fancy