whore

[ hawr ]
See synonyms for whore on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a person who engages in sex acts for money; prostitute.

  2. Disparaging and Offensive. a person who is sexually promiscuous.

  1. a person who sacrifices personal principles or uses someone or something in a base or unworthy manner, usually for money: a greedy publicity whore.

verb (used without object),whored, whor·ing.
  1. to act as a whore.

  2. to consort with whores.

  1. to seek after something that is base or unworthy: those who practice idolatry and whore after other gods.

verb (used with object),whored, whor·ing.
  1. to put to a base or unworthy use (sometimes followed by out): He’s whoring out his skills by writing for popular magazines.

  2. Obsolete. to make a whore of; corrupt; debauch.

Origin of whore

1
First recorded before 1100; Middle English, Old English hōre; cognate with German Hure, Old Norse hōra; akin to Gothic hors “harlot,” Latin cārus “beloved; expensive”

word story For whore

As far as etymology goes, whore is unblemished: It’s from Old English hōre, from the Germanic root hō-, extended with a suffixed -r, thus hōr-.
The Germanic root is a regular development of the Proto-Indo-European root kā- “to like, desire” (extended with the same suffixed -r ). Kār- appears in Latin in cārus “dear, beloved, expensive,” and in the noun cāritās “love, affection, high price” (and through Old French, in charity meaning “Christian love”). Kār- appears in the Celtic languages as cara in Irish, and car in Welsh and Breton, all meaning “friend.” In Slavic (Polish), we find kurva.
The unetymological spelling, with initial w- (as also occurs in whole ), became common about 1600.
Nell Gwyn (1650-87), one of King Charles II’s numerous mistresses, made the best comeback ever recorded: When she was surrounded in her coach by a Protestant mob who thought she was Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth (1649–1734), a Catholic woman and another of King Charles’s mistresses, Nell leaned out of her coach and shouted down the mob with “Pray good people be civil, I am the King’s Protestant whore.”

Other definitions for who're (2 of 2)

who're
[ hoo-er ]

  1. contraction of who are:Who're the people at the next table?

usage note For who're

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

British Dictionary definitions for whore

whore

/ (hɔː) /


noun
  1. a prostitute or promiscuous woman: often a term of abuse

verb(intr)
  1. to be or act as a prostitute

  2. (of a man) to have promiscuous sexual relations, esp with prostitutes

  1. (often foll by after) to seek that which is immoral, idolatrous, etc

Origin of whore

1
Old English hōre; related to Old Norse hōra, Old High German hvora, Latin carus dear

Derived forms of whore

  • whorish, adjective
  • whorishly, adverb
  • whorishness, noun

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012