# Demimondaine *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 13 Jul 1998* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### mary whalen *13 Jul 1998, 23:53* This is Sean Whalen (prion). Did Robert Borski have a theory that some of the prostitutes in the Maison du chien in tFHoC were aborigines? Well, when I reread the book, the first time their function was named, No. 5 called them demimondaines. Now, the primary meaning of this word is not prostitute, it is a woman who maintains herself on the largess of her current lover. It can also mean prostitute, however. But, why did he use a term that primarily means something else? Well, he does it elsewhere, such as chien meaning wolf as well as dog, and saltimbique meaning charlatan as well as performer. However, it's possible, though I'm not completely convinced, that the prostitutes are abos and that he used the word partly because the radical meaning is half-worldly. It is used the way it is because such people live on the fringes of decency, while not going directly over it (in it's primary definition, I assume). It's also made up of a Greek word and a French word, perhaps because of the names of some of the women there. I'm not sure if it really has any significance, but I thought others might want some new information to use. prion ---