demimonde means A class of women maintained by wealthy protectors; female courtesans or prostitutes as a group. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
DEMIMONDE — [Noun] A class of women maintained by wealthy protectors, often courtesans or prostitutes, or more broadly, a group of persons with little respect or reputation. From French demi-monde (literally "half-world"), from demi ("half") + monde ("world, people"), possibly coined by Alexandre Dumas fils in 1855. Unlike the "underworld" (which thrives in shadowy illegality) or "aristocracy" (which flaunts its gilded lineage), the demimonde exists in the flickering gaslight between disgrace and desire. It is the rustle of silk skirts in a private opera box, the glint of a diamond bracelet slipping from a wrist at dawn, the murmured negotiations over champagne in a velvet-draped salon—a world neither high nor low, but suspended in the quiet tragedy of borrowed time.
noun
- A class of women maintained by wealthy protectors; female courtesans or prostitutes as a group.“A most remarkable instance of this was afforded in the play of Camille by the performance of the supper-scene. The stage in this scene is supposed to represent a supper-room, enlivened by the presence of a party of young Parisians, more gay, indeed, than respectable, but still Parisians, and Parisians of the demimonde, which, of the two halves that go to make up the whole of the monde, preserves t”
- A group having little respect or reputation.“the literary demimonde”
- A member of such a class or group of persons.“Those who seek pleasure in a round of dances and fashionable frolic, where the german and the horse-race, the card-table and the drive, are the order of the day, will gather to the sea side and the spa; they will seek Newport, the maelstrom of money; or Long Branch with its broiling sun and its retinue of demimondes and stuck-up-ities; […]”