Meaning of Wench | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A girl or young woman, especially a buxom or lively one.
   archaic, dialectal, humorous, offensive, possibly
2. A girl or young woman of a lower class.
   archaic, dialectal, humorous, offensive, possibly, specifically
3. Used as a term of endearment for a female person, especially a wife, daughter, or girlfriend: darling, sweetheart.
   archaic, dialectal
4. A woman servant; a maidservant.
   archaic
5. A promiscuous woman; a mistress (“other woman in an extramarital relationship”).
   archaic
6. A prostitute.
   archaic
7. A black woman (of any age), especially if in a condition of servitude.
   US, archaic, historical

Equivalents

Examples

“Jane played the role of a wench in an Elizabethan comedy.”

“I, like a tẽder harted vvench, ſkriked out for feare of the divell.”

The New Arcadia

“hee weepes like a wench that had ſhed her / milke, he hath confeſt himſelfe to Morgan, whom hee ſuppoſes to be a Friar, [...]”

“Now Jonathan and Ahimaaz ſtayed by En-rogel: (for they might not be ſeene to come into the citie) and a wench went and told them: and they went, and tolde king Dauid.”

“Beside, this I affirm—afford / Impression of it in thy soul—I will not use my sword / On thee or any for a wench, unjustly though thou tak'st / The thing thou gav'st; […]”

“He [a chief minister] is uſually governed by a decayed Wench, or favourite Footman, who are the Tunnels through which all Graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the laſt Reſort, the Governors of the Kingdom.”

“He was received by the daughter of the house, a pretty, buxom, blue-eyed little wench, who seemed to regard the tall, bronzed, black-eyed stranger with much and evident favour.”

“We got wenches on the benches, and bitties with titties / Housing all girlies from city to city”

“"Can't we use a real girl? Can't Maria just play along?" / "She's at the movies with Chanel." / "Lucky wench. Why can't Ryan just be with a guy? Aren't you offended?" / "Just doing what Rain said to do. And actually, a little, yeah."”

“The woman is a brazen, hard-looking wench, a female pedlar, who hawks needles, thread, cheap looking-glasses, pious pictures, almanacs, hair-pins, ballads, of the most humble pattern, through the country.”

“When I am dead, good Wench, / Let me be vs'd with Honor; ſtrew me ouer / With Maiden Flowers, that all the world may know / I was a chaſte Wife, to my Graue: [...]”

“The mother held her tight, / Saying hard between her teeth—'Why wench, why wench, / The squire speaks to you now—the squire's too good; / He means to set you up, and comfort us. / Be mannerly at least.'”

“When they had kyndled a fyre in the myddes of the palys / and were sett doune to gedder / Peter alsoo sate doune amonge them. And won off the wenches / as he sate / beholde him by the light and sett goode eyesight on him / and sayde: This same was also with hym. Then he denyed hym sayinge: Woman I knowe hym nott.”

“"I fear there is a chase; I think I hear three or four galloping together; I am sure I hear more horses than one." / "Pooh, pooh, it is the wench of the house that is clattering to the well in her pattens; […]."”

“[W]orking for Colonel Boone a the time—and two more men whose names I disremember now, and a nigger wench we had for a cook. […] So I got onto one of the ponies and led the others down to the spring near camp to water them while the wench was a getting breakfast, and some o' the rest o' the outfit was a fixin the saddles and greasing the wagon.”

“2 [Friar Bernardine]. Thou haſt committed— / Bar[abas]. Fornication? but that was in another Country; And beſides, the Wench is dead.”

“Whilſt Men have theſe Ambitious Fancies, / And wanton Wenches read Romances, / Our Sex will—What? out with it: Lye: / And Theirs in equal Strains reply.”

“It must not thought a digression from my intended speculation, to talk of bawds in a discourse upon wenches; for a woman of the town is not thoroughly and properly such, without having gone through the education of one of these houses.”

“Nancy Basset, 28, likely wench, mulatto / Proved to be free. / Certified free as per General Birch Certificate. / / Patience Jackson, 23, very likely wench, mulatto / Says she was born free Rhode Island. / Certified free as per General Birch Certificate.”

“Now, I bought a gal once, when I was in the trade,—a tight, likely wench she was, too, and quite considerable smart— [...]”

“A colored girl […] was fined ten dollars in the Freedman's Court yesterday, for being drunk and disorderly. Not having the money in her possession, she requested that a guard be sent with her to her residence to procure it. The Provost allowed a guard to wait on the wench, who, as soon as she found herself inside of her own door, locked it, and left the poor guard outside without the money. He returned to court without either the wench or fine.”

“So complete was this illusion, claims [Eric] Lott, that many audience members, including Mark Twain's mother, believed they were seeing authentic, biologically black performers on New York stages. Of course, wench characters seem to especially test the bounds of authentic performance. Played by men, wenches were nonetheless read by audiences as beautiful women: [...] [E]xtant photographs and engravings of wench performers do not always represent them as blacked up, […] In antebellum minstrel shows, wench songs were most often sung about mulatto women rather than by them.”

CEFR level