Word.ws English Dictionary

Pretty Woman syndrome

Pretty Woman syndrome noun: the situation in which young women are attracted to prostitution as a result of glamorous depictions in the media.

Noun

Pretty Woman syndrome (uncountable)

  1. The situation in which young women are attracted to prostitution as a result of glamorous depictions in the media.

Origin of Pretty Woman syndrome

In reference to the romantic comedy film Pretty Woman (1990), in which a wealthy businessman develops feelings for the prostitute he has hired to pose as his girlfriend.

Questions about Pretty Woman syndrome

What does Pretty Woman syndrome mean?
Pretty Woman syndrome means the situation in which young women are attracted to prostitution as a result of glamorous depictions in the media.
What part of speech is Pretty Woman syndrome?
Pretty Woman syndrome is a noun.

Words near Pretty Woman syndrome in the dictionary

  1. pretty Polly
  2. pretty privilege
  3. pretty privileged
  4. pretty up
  5. pretty well
  6. Pretty Woman syndrome
  7. pretty-by-night
  8. pretty-face wallabies
  9. pretty-face wallaby
  10. pretty-faced wallabies
  11. pretty-faced wallaby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pretty Woman syndrome (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: “Pretty Woman syndrome.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pretty_woman_syndrome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.