Definition
A person who engages in sexual intercourse or other sexual acts in exchange for payment or other consideration, typically as a regular practice or means of livelihood. Modern statutes in most jurisdictions apply the term to persons of any gender, though historical legal usage confined it exclusively to women.
The term functions both as a noun (identifying a person engaged in the conduct) and as a verb (to make available for sexual use in exchange for money). In statutory contexts, the noun form is more common and typically defines a class of person subject to criminal penalty or regulatory oversight. Some modern codes prefer "person engaged in prostitution" to avoid the stigmatizing weight of the label as a status designation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any person, especially a woman, who has sexual intercourse or engages in other sexual activity for payment, especially as a means of livelihood; also used figuratively for a person who performs demeaning activity for money or personal gain.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To offer a woman to lewd use; to give up to lewdness for hire. Also used figuratively: to devote to base or unworthy purposes, as in to prostitute one's talents or official powers.
The ordinary meaning and the legal meaning align closely at the core — exchange of sexual access for payment — but diverge in two important ways. First, historical legal usage treated the term as applying exclusively to women, a limitation not present in modern common usage or modern statutory law. Second, legal usage has frequently required that the conduct be habitual or commercial in character, not merely occasional; the figurative sense (prostituting one's talents) carries no legal weight whatsoever and should never be imported into statutory interpretation.
Common Confusion
PROSTITUTE vs. COMMON PROSTITUTE: Historical sources, including Anderson's, distinguish between a prostitute (a person who engages in illicit sexual intercourse for gain) and a common prostitute (a public prostitute who makes a business of selling sexual access). The "common" designation historically carried additional legal significance — it was a status offense in many jurisdictions and triggered distinct criminal and regulatory consequences. Modern statutes have largely collapsed this distinction, but researchers working with 19th- and early 20th-century materials will encounter both formulations and should not treat them as interchangeable.
PROSTITUTE vs. SOLICITOR/SOLICITATION: The term prostitute identifies the person offering or providing sexual services; solicitation is the act of offering or agreeing to engage in those services. Many modern statutes punish the act of solicitation rather than the status of being a prostitute, reflecting constitutional concerns about status-based criminal liability.
Why It Matters in Research
Historical sources define prostitute exclusively as female. Black's (both editions) and Anderson's use "woman" or "female" throughout, and the case law those dictionaries cite — Carpenter v. People and State v. Stoyell — arose in an era when statutes were similarly gendered. Researchers applying these sources to modern questions must be alert: contemporary statutes are overwhelmingly gender-neutral, and some jurisdictions have revised their definitions expressly in response to constitutional equal protection concerns. Importing historical gendered definitions into modern statutory analysis is a significant interpretive error.
The "indiscriminate" element in historical definitions is a trap. Black's defines the prostitute as one who "indiscriminately consorts with men for hire," and Anderson's echoes this. Courts historically debated whether intercourse with one or two men sufficed — Anderson's notes that it may — but the implication that promiscuity with many partners is required appears in older cases and treatises. Modern statutory definitions typically require only an offer or agreement to engage in sexual conduct for a fee, with no multiplicity requirement. The historical "indiscriminate" language has largely disappeared from modern codes.
Corpus researchers should watch for the distinction between prostitution as a status offense and prostitution as a conduct offense. The Supreme Court's decision in Robinson v. California (1962) — holding that criminalizing the status of being a narcotics addict violates the Eighth Amendment — cast constitutional doubt on statutes that penalized the status of being a prostitute rather than specific acts. This produced a wave of statutory revision in the 1960s and 1970s that is directly traceable in the corpus. Pre- and post-Robinson materials will treat the term differently.
Legalization and decriminalization debates have further fractured the vocabulary in recent decades. Terms like sex worker, commercial sex act, and trafficked person appear in modern legislative and policy materials and carry distinct legal meanings that do not map cleanly onto the historical dictionary definition of prostitute. The Law Mind corpus contains materials spanning the full arc of this evolution, and researchers should not assume terminological stability across time periods.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the core: a woman who engages in sexual intercourse with men for money. Black's (1st Ed.) offers the bare definition without elaboration. Black's (2nd Ed.) adds case citations — Carpenter v. People and State v. Stoyell — grounding the definition in actual judicial usage. Anderson's is the most expansive, distinguishing the general term from "common prostitute," noting that incontinence with one or two men may suffice to establish the status, and gesturing toward the concept of unchastity as an element.
What the historical dictionaries miss: they say nothing about the verb form of the term (to prostitute), nothing about male prostitution, nothing about solicitation as a distinct legal act, and nothing about the constitutional dimension that would reshape the law in the 20th century. Their silence on these points reflects the period, not the law's full scope. Researchers should treat these definitions as accurate for their era and jurisdiction but inadequate for modern research without supplementation.
Jurisdictional Note
Prostitution law remains primarily a matter of state law in the United States, with significant variation in how the term is defined, what conduct is criminalized (the act, the solicitation, the procurement, or all three), and whether enforcement targets providers, buyers, or both. Nevada is the only U.S. state permitting licensed brothel prostitution in certain counties. Federal law engages through trafficking statutes and the Mann Act rather than through a direct federal definition of prostitute.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Prostitution and Solicitation (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)