Salon at the Rue des Moulins (1894), by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
14 August 2023
A bordello is, of course, a brothel, a house of prostitution. It is an example of a word that has been borrowed into English multiple times at different points in history.
Bordello is a sixteenth-century borrowing from Italian, but it has an earlier form bordel, dating to c. 1300, that is a borrowing from Anglo-Norman. The Anglo-Norman originally, c. 1185, meant a cottage or hut but came to mean a brothel by around 1300, about the time the word started to be used in English. The French and Italian words come from the post-classical Latin bordellum, meaning a cottage or small land holding. Bordellum appears in Anglo-Latin from c. 1100. (The Anglo-Latin word would later, in the late fourteenth century, also acquire the sense of a brothel, but this sense would be due to influence from the English and Anglo-Norman.)
Bordel appears in English writing c. 1300 in the Life of St. Lucy found in the collection of hagiographies known as the Early South English Legendary. Lucy was condemned to a brothel for refusing to marry a pagan man and for giving to the poor her wealth, which legally belonged to the man she was supposed to marry. One version of the life has this exchange between the judge and Lucy:
“I-wedded ich was to Ihesu crist,” : þis holie maide him tolde
“Þo ich was i-baptized : and þulke weddinge ichulle holde.
Ake to hore-dome þov wouldest me bringue : ȝwane þov me wouldest make
Mine spousede louerd Ihesu crist : for ani oþur man for-sake.”
“Þou schalt for-sake him,” quath þe Iustise : “haddest þou it i-swore :
For to þe commune bordel þov schalt beo : i-lad oþur i-bore,
And þare schal mani a moder-child : go to þi foule licame
And ligge bi þe, alle þat wollez : in hore-dom and in schame.”(“I was wed to Jesus Christ,” this holy maid told him. “At the time I was baptized, and it was ordained that I should have that marriage. Yet to whoredom you would bring me when you would make me forsake my spouse, the lord Jesus Christ, for any other man.”
“You shall forsake him,” said the judge, “whom you had promised. For to a common bordel you shall be taken or carried, and there shall many a mother’s child go to your foul body and lie with you, all that will, in whoredom and in shame.”)
Bordello, borrowed from the Italian, first appears in a 1581 anti-Catholic tract:
Wisdome is requisite in a Pope, whereby he may knowe golde from siluer, gemmes and precious stones, fro[m] common stones which bee in the streetes. Hee must haue wisedome to counte them, wisedome to locke them vp in his treasure house: hee cannot bee without wisedome to picke out the best golde from the badde, to giue to his waiting gentlewomen at bed and boorde. Hee must moreouer haue wisedome to prouide for his bastardely children, which hee begot whiles hee was a soule Priest to the Putanne in the Burdello or whilest hee saide Masse elswhere for money, to supplie the necessitie of any sober Curtezane, and defloured Virgin
Note that bordello, or burdello, appears in an Italian context and is italicized in the book, indicating that the word was not fully anglicized by this date. But it would quickly be picked up and replace bordel as the more common form.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. bordel, n.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. bordellum, bordellus, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Horstmann, Carl, ed. “Vita sancta Lucie uirginis.” The Early South English Legendary. Early English Text Society. London: N. Trübner, 1887, 103, lines 91–98. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud 108. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. bordel, n.(1).
Nicholls, John. Pilgrimage, Whrein Is Diplaied the Liues of the Proude Popes, Ambitious Cardinals, Lecherous Bishops, Fat Bellied Monkes, and Hypocriticall Iesuites. London: Thomas Dawson, 1581, sig. C3. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2022, s.v. bordello, n.
Image credit: Painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1894. Public domain work. Wikimedia Commons. Photograph by Didier Descouens, 2021, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.