Well attestedNamed from the place
Covent Garden nun
noun · first attested 18th century
The joke of calling a prostitute a nun is older than the phrase by centuries.
A prostitute.
51.5125°N -0.1225°W · Q55019
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 18th century
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Covent Garden
- In English
Covent Garden nun
English slang had used nun, abbess and nunnery for the sex trade since at least Shakespeare's time, and eighteenth-century London simply attached the district where the trade concentrated. Covent Garden had been laid out by Inigo Jones in the 1630s as an aristocratic square, and the tenants moved out as the market and the brothels moved in. Farmer and Henley were still recording the phrase in the nineteenth century.
Also pinned to Covent Garden
2 more from the same place
United Kingdom
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