brothel
Americannoun
noun
-
a house or other place where men pay to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes
-
informal any untidy or messy place
Other Word Forms
- brothellike adjective
Etymology
Origin of brothel
First recorded in 1350–1400, for an earlier sense; short for brothel-house “whorehouse”; Middle English brothel “harlot,” originally, “worthless person,” from broth- (past participle stem of brethen, Old English brēothan “to decay, degenerate”) + -el, noun suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
No-nonsense Maomao, a Tang Dynasty-era girl raised in a brothel who escapes servitude to parlay her apothecary skills in service of the palace, is one of the best female protagonists of all time.
From Salon
There, the hard-working seven-person cast of “Dark Noon,” which opened on Monday, spends much of the production’s 105 minutes assembling the edifices of westward-creeping American civilization, from home to brothel to church to jail.
From New York Times
Bars, brothels, warehouses and religious missions grew around the buildings.
From Los Angeles Times
How did this music surpass its muses from the holds to the plantation to the medicine shows and minstrels and brothels and jukes, to the Grammys red carpet, lavish video shoots and MTV Cribs?
From Los Angeles Times
A South Korean court has ordered Japan to compensate a group of women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War Two.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
