souteneur

English

Etymology

From French souteneur (literally “one who supports”), from the verb soutenir.

Noun

souteneur (plural souteneurs)

1. A man who protects, and commonly compels, a prostitute of any gender and lives off the earnings; a pimp. Originally a Parisian term, but since adopted into other languages such as English.
   • 1892 Albert Dresden Vandam. An Englishman in Paris: (Notes and Recollections) - Page 335

     The souteneur ... though he lives in comparative comfort from what his mistress gives him, he rarely makes a big haul. His mistress gone, the pot ceases to boil; in fact, he calls her his marmite.

   • 1894 Richard Krafft-Ebing & Charles Gilbert Chaddock. Psychopathia Sexualis. p. 416 Pub. F.A.Davis

     These "souteneurs" attach their "jesus" to themselves.
     The passive pederasts are "petits jusus," "jesus," or "aunts."
     The "petits jesus" are lost, depraved children, whom accident places in the hands of active pederasts, who seduce them, and reveal to them the horrible means of earning a livelihood, either as "entretenus" or as male street-walkers, with or without "souteneurs."
     The most suitable and promising "petits jesus" are given into the hands of persons who instruct these children in the art of female dress and manner. Gradually they then seek to emancipate themselves from their teachers and masters, in order to become "femmes entretenues"; and not infrequently by means of anonymous denunciation of their "souteneurs" to the police.
     It is the object of the "souteneur" and the "petit jesus" to make the latter appear young, as long as possible, by means of all the arts of the toilet.

   • 1920 Aldous Huxley Limbo

     As long as the two parts of him kept well apart, as long as his male self could understand mathematics, and as long as his lady novelist’s self kept up her regular habit of writing at night and retiring from business during the day, the arrangement would be admirable... His life would arrange itself so easily and well. He would devote the day to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, to philosophy and mathematics... After midnight he would write novels with a feminine pen, earning the money that would make his unproductive male labours possible. A kind of spiritual souteneur... Like a gentleman of the East, he would sit still and smoke his philosophic pipe while the womenfolk did the dirty work.

Dutch

Etymology

From French souteneur (literally “one who supports”), from the verb soutenir.

Pronunciation

• Audio:

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Noun

souteneur m (plural souteneurs, diminutive souteneurtje n)

1. pimp, souteneur

Synonyms

• pooier

French

Etymology

From soutenir +‎ -eur.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sut.nœʁ/

Noun

souteneur m (plural souteneurs, feminine souteneuse)

1. pimp, souteneur

   Synonym: proxénète

Descendants

• → Finnish: sutenööri
• → Polish: sutener
• → Russian: сутенёр (sutenjór)

Further reading

• “souteneur”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.