Definition
The act or practice of engaging in sexual activity with others, typically for payment or other consideration. Modern law defines prostitution without regard to the sex or gender of any party involved, treating it as the exchange of sexual conduct for money, goods, or services.
Most criminal statutes reach three distinct forms of conduct: (1) the act of prostitution itself — performing or agreeing to perform sexual activity in exchange for compensation; (2) solicitation of prostitution — offering, requesting, or agreeing to engage in such an exchange; and (3) promotion or facilitation — managing, profiting from, or operating a prostitution enterprise, often charged separately as pandering, procuring, or promoting.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Engaging in sexual activity with another person for pay or in exchange for goods or services; also used figuratively to mean debasement for profit or impure motives.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act or practice of offering the body to indiscriminate intercourse with men; common lewdness of a woman. Also applied figuratively: "the prostitution of abilities," "the prostitution of the press."
The historical common definition and the historical legal definition were essentially identical — both confined the term to women as the active party and required "indiscriminate" availability to any willing payer. Modern law has abandoned both limitations. Contemporary statutes are gender-neutral and do not require indiscriminate availability; a single transaction for compensation is sufficient. The figurative sense (debasing one's talents for gain) has no legal meaning but appears frequently in older secondary sources, which can muddy keyword searches in historical corpora.
Common Confusion
Prostitution is frequently confused with related but distinct offenses. Solicitation of prostitution is the offer or request to engage in the act, not the act itself — a jurisdictionally significant distinction because the offense is complete at agreement, regardless of whether any sexual conduct occurs. Pandering, procuring, and promoting prostitution are facilitation offenses targeting third parties who profit from or enable the exchange; these carry separate and often heavier penalties than the underlying act. Human trafficking, while sometimes involving prostitution, is a distinct federal and state offense requiring proof of force, fraud, or coercion, and conflating the two in research will produce misleading results in both directions.
Why It Matters in Research
The historical legal definition is substantially narrower than modern law. Both Black's editions and Bouvier's define prostitution exclusively in terms of a woman offering herself to men, and Bouvier's emphasizes "common and indiscriminate" availability — language that some early courts used to distinguish a kept mistress (one man, ongoing relationship) from a prostitute (multiple men, public availability). Modern statutes have discarded both the gender limitation and the indiscriminacy requirement; a single act for pay is sufficient. Researchers reading older case law should be alert to acquittals or narrow constructions turning on these now-abandoned distinctions.
Regulatory treatment has shifted dramatically across periods. Nineteenth-century municipal law often tolerated or zoned prostitution rather than criminalizing it outright. Early twentieth-century federal law — notably the Mann Act of 1910 — targeted interstate transportation for immoral purposes, not prostitution per se, and Mann Act cases appear in federal reporters under entirely different headings. Researchers tracing federal involvement in prostitution regulation before the mid-twentieth century should search trafficking and transportation headings alongside prostitution itself.
The modern corpus is complicated by FOSTA-SESTA (the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, enacted 2018), which amended federal law to impose liability on online platforms facilitating prostitution. This legislation generated significant secondary literature intermixing prostitution and trafficking analysis; researchers should maintain the doctrinal distinction between the two when using post-2018 sources.
State-level decriminalization and partial decriminalization debates have produced a substantial policy literature that may appear in legal databases alongside doctrinal sources. Nevada's licensed brothel system is the only model of partial legalization in U.S. jurisdiction; all other states treat prostitution as criminal to varying degrees.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's agree on the core historical definition: a woman permitting indiscriminate sexual intercourse for gain. All three sources reflect the gender-specific framing standard to nineteenth-century law. Bouvier's is the most careful, presenting the definition as drawn from case law (citing Massachusetts and Missouri authority) and emphasizing the "common and indiscriminate" element, which had real doctrinal force in distinguishing prostitution from other sexual offenses at the time.
None of the historical dictionaries address the third-party facilitation offenses (pandering, procuring) within the prostitution entry itself — those appear as separate headings — which means researchers using only the prostitution entry in historical sources will miss a significant portion of the regulatory framework. None anticipate the federal dimension introduced by progressive-era legislation, and none address the question of male or gender-nonconforming persons as sellers of sexual services, since that question simply did not appear in the courts of their era.
The Bouvier's entry that appears in the source material contains an apparent transcription artifact — a passage about prospectus and share allottees that belongs to a different entry entirely. This is an indexing error in the source, not a feature of the term.
Jurisdictional Note
Prostitution is primarily a state and local offense in the United States. Nevada permits licensed brothel prostitution in counties below a population threshold. Rhode Island had an unusual statutory gap that left indoor prostitution unregulated for a period before legislative correction. Internationally, models range from full criminalization to partial decriminalization (Sweden's "Nordic model," which criminalizes buying but not selling) to full legalization with regulation (Germany, Netherlands). Researchers working in comparative or international law should not assume the U.S. criminal framework maps onto foreign systems.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Prostitution and Solicitation (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)