From an online source:
"''Get thee to a nunnery'' also contains
some not very flattering innuendo. The term 'nunnery'
was slang for a brothel ('abbess' was used to
refer to the madam in charge of the establishment)."
----
This may be confusing.
Suppose then that we DO multiply senses beyond necessity:
nunnery.
1. place with nuns, convent.
2. brothel, i.e. place with prostitutes.
abbess:
1. woman who runs convent.
2. woman who runs brothel. (Now obsolete).
---- The idea of 'obsolete' irriates me beyond measure. I mean, once a conversational implicature, ALWAYS a conversational implicature!
---- Grice does grant that a conventional implicature 'may have started life as a conversational implicature' but surely you cannot POSTULATE (by fiat) that there will not be a new generation that starts using 'nunnery' AGAIN to mean 'brothel' or 'abbess' to mean 'madam'.
Etc.
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Maybe it was a convent AND a brothel--like functioned as both (wh**e by day, nun by night? or vice versa).
ReplyDeleteO Frabjous Day!
We need evidence. The belles-lettres types are ready to note that 'abbess' was 'slang' for 'madam' -- but we need geographical detail. What SORTS of brothels were called 'nunneries'? I mean, from the ones I've seen in LONDON (the London that Shakespeare knew so well they did not LOOK like convents. I expect a convent has an uninviting look about it (unlike perhaps a brothel). More on brothels soon, we hope.
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