Meanings
plural fricatrices
- obsoleteA lewd woman or prostitute.
And am asham'd you' should ha' no more forehead / Than thus to be the patron, or St. George, To a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice, / A female devil, in a male outside
1605 (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Volpone, or The Foxe. A Comœdie. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii, page 4981 more example
One can imagine an ideal servent who serves out of pure love for his master, just as one can an ideal rustic who remains a ditcher from a love of nature, or an ideal fricatrice who spreads her legs a dozen times a night from a love of copulation. But one never encounters these fabulous creatures in reality.
1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter 35, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN - obsoleteA woman who masturbates.
Origin
- Latinfrictrix
- Englishfricatrice
Compare Latin frictrix, from fricare (“to rub”).
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
fricatrice. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fricatrice
“fricatrice.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fricatrice. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fricatrice,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fricatrice.
Source: fricatrice on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.