chamber-work

English

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Noun

chamber-work (uncountable)

1. (euphemistic, obsolete) Sex; fornication.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:
     , vol.I, New York, 2001, p.235:

     Jacchinus […] instanceth in a patient of his, that married a young wife in a hot summer, “and so dried himself with chamber-work, that he became in short space, from melancholy, mad”: he cured him by moistening remedies.

2. The work of a chambermaid.