brothel
n. countablen. a building or house where people pay to have sex with someone.
n. an establishment where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes in exchange for payment.
The police closed down an illegal brothel in the city center.
Historical records show that the district was once famous for its high-end brothels and theaters.
The novel explores the complex social hierarchies within a nineteenth-century brothel, focusing on the lives of the women who lived and worked there.
Short for brothel-house (“house of prostitution”), from brothel (“a wretch; scoundrel; lecher; harlot; prostitute”) + house, influenced by bordel. For more on brothel (“a wretch”), see below.
From Middle English brothel, brodel, brodelle, brethel (“a wretch, a depraved man or woman”) (compare also Middle English bretheling (“a wretch”)), apparently from an unrecorded Old English brēoþel (“degenerative, corruptive”), related to Old English ābrēoþan (“to unsettle, degrade, ruin, frustrate, degenerate, deteriorate, fall away”); Old English ābroþen (“degenerate, base, trifling”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic breuþaną (“to fall apart; crumble”). The expected modern English form would be *broddle (see fiddle); the failure of the change from /ðl/ to /dl/ may be because of the intervening schwa in the word's uninflected forms, influence from the verb, or most likely, a dialectal development (compare stathel besides staddle).
Commonly used in legal and historical contexts; often replaced by euphemisms in modern casual speech.