Brim

subs. (old).—A prostitute: spec. a termagant whore; occasionally used, without reference to moral character, for an angry, shrewish, woman: also BRIMSTONE, of which BRIM is a contraction. See TART. As adj. = wanton; shrewish: also BRIMSTONE. As verb. = to whore.

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. Brimming, a Boor’s copulating with a Sow, also now us’d for a Man’s with a BRIM.

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. BRIM, or Brimstone, a very Impudent, Lew’d Woman.

  1712.  BP. BURNET, in Walpole’s Reminiscences (1819), 75. ‘Oh, madam,’ said the bishop, ‘do not you know what a BRIMSTONE of a wife he had?’

  1730–6.  BAILEY. BRIM [q. a contraction of Brimstone], a common strumpet.

  1751.  SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, vi. ‘She is … not a BRIMSTONE, like Kate Koddle, of Chatham.’

  1760.  C. JOHNSTONE, Chrysal, II., 190. I hate the law damnably, ever since I lost a year’s pay for hindering our boatswain’s mate’s brother to beat his wife. The BRIMSTONE swore I beat her husband, and so I paid for meddling.

  1764.  BRIDGES, A Burlesque Translation of Homer (1797), i., 173.

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. BRIM. (Abbreviation of BRIMSTONE.). An abandoned woman; perhaps originally only a passionate or irascible woman, compared to BRIMSTONE for its inflammability.

  1789.  G. PARKER, Banter’s Christening [Life’s Painter].

  1798.  Reform’d in Time, 37.

  1808.  JAMIESON, An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. BRIM. A cant term for a trull, Loth.

  1859.  H. KINGSLEY, Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, xxiii. Who seemed, too, to have a temper of her own, and promised, under circumstances, to turn out a bit of a B—MST—NE.