Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)
(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the
wanton; lewd; low; base.
(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled
person (now rare).
(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a
cheat; a rascal (obsolete).
(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.
Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army). It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto. The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related. Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been. Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots. The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.
Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late
1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed
occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in
the Middle English and Old French. Geoffrey
Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive as well as pejorative sense and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and
later to actors. What is the now
prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary
sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century,
being well-documented by the early fifteenth.
Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English
translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore")
which cemented the association.
The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning
as make it gender-specific. The noun harlotry
(loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting)
had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in
biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like
“strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically
specific. In this, harlot is part of a
long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory
terms to be applied to women. It has to
be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was
thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so
many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker,
hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the
evening, painted woman et al. So the
bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the
translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King
James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in
Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.
Genesis 38:24: And
it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar
thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with
child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.
Leviticus 21:14: A
widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not
take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.
Joshua 6:25: And
Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that
she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the
messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
Isaiah 1:21: How is
the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness
lodged in it; but now murderers.
Ezekiel 16:15: But
thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy
renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it
was.
Ezekiel 16:41: And
they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the
sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot,
and thou also shalt give no hire any more.
Ezekiel 23:19: Yet
she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth,
wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
Ezekiel 23:44: Yet
they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so
went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.
Amos 7:17: Therefore
thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and
thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line;
and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into
captivity forth of his land.
Nahum 3:4: Because
of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of
witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through
her witchcrafts.
Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row). Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964), the "press barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang"). Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable. The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were inclined to believe them. Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.
Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it. His leadership of the Tory party challenged
because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire
free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s
mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling
(1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook. Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as
wanting power without responsibility, “…the
prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.” It was the most effective political speech in
the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although
Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s. Often underestimated, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and
Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political
operator of the era.
The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more
regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered
lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change
activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003). Delivered
in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he
argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the
aircraft as a military weapon:
“I think it is well
also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that
can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through…”. “The only defense is in offence, which means
that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy
if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what
is waiting for them when the next war comes.”
Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of
civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase "the bomber will always get through"
reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking
from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets,
Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the
prejudices and worst instincts of many.
That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech,
the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:
"I do not know how the youth
of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that
having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the
air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been
on it."
“This is a question for
young men far more than it is for us…” “Few
of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…” “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too
old to be of use to anyone. But what
about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of
warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth.
It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”
“If the conscience of the
young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the
thing will be done.” “As I say, the
future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization
is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do
not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they
principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on
the earth.”
Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud
and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville
Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938
when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature
an a guarantee of “peace in our time”. Soon, the
views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.
Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), United Nations, New York, September 2019. Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom. Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election. Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.
Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).
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