Word.ws English Dictionary

courtesans

courtesans is the plural of courtesan.

Meaning of courtesan

Noun

courtesan (plural courtesans)

  1. A female prostitute, especially one with high-status or wealthy clients.
    • What wine, what drug, what philtre known of man / Will drown this ancient foe, / Ruthless and ravenous as a courtesan, / Sure as an ant, and slow?1909, Charles Baudelaire, “The Irreparable”, in John Collings Squire, transl., Poems and Baudelaire Flowers
  2. (dated) The mistress of a royal or noble.
  3. (archaic) A woman of a royal or noble court.
  4. A fairy chess piece that can move to any adjacent square, that, when captured, the capturing piece is also eliminated.
    • The courtesan moves like a mann, but whatever piece captures her is also removed from the board (unless it’s a king).2018 October 12, aabicus, “My 7 Favorite Fairy Chess Pieces”, in The Daily SPUF

Questions about courtesans

What is courtesans the plural of?
Courtesans is the plural of courtesan.

Words near courtesans in the dictionary

  1. courtepy
  2. courter
  3. courters
  4. courtesan
  5. courtesanry
  6. courtesans
  7. courtesanship
  8. courtesie
  9. courtesied
  10. courtesies
  11. courtest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: courtesans (page history and authors); courtesan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “courtesans.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/courtesans. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.