quean

plural queans · alternative Scotland quine · alternative obsolete quene · alternative obsolete queane

1. archaicA woman, now especially an impudent or disreputable woman; a prostitute.First known use 10th c.

   Rahab, that harlot, began to be a professed quean at ten years of age […]

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition III, section 2, member 1, subsection ii

   2 more examples

   However, terrible as it may seem to the tall maiden sisters of J.P.’s in Queen Anne houses with walled vegetable gardens, this courtesan, strumpet, harlot, whore, punk, fille de joie, street-walker, this trollop, this trull, this baggage, this hussy, this drab, skit, rig, quean, mopsy, demirep, demimondaine, this wanton, this fornicatress, this doxy, this concubine, this frail sister, this poor Queenie—did actually solicit me, did actually say ‘coming home to-night, dearie’ and my soul was not blasted enough to call a policeman.

   1936, Anthony Bertram, Like the Phoenix

   So ended Lauretta her song, to which all hearkened attentively, though not all interpreted it alike. Some were inclined to give it a moral after the Milanese fashion, to wit, that a good porker was better than a pretty quean.

   1921, original c. 1353, first English translation 1620, Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by J.M. Rigg, The Decameron, page 307

2. ScotlandA young woman, a girl; a daughter.First known use 15th c.

   Forbye the two queans there was the son, John Gordon, as coarse a devil as you’d meet, he’d already had two–three queans in trouble and him but barely eighteen years old.

   1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 30