Demimonde:
- (especially during the last half of the 19th century) a class of women who have lost their standing in respectable society because of indiscreet behavior or sexual promiscuity.
- a demimondaine.
- prostitutes or courtesans in general.
- a group whose activities are ethically or legally questionable:
a demimonde of investigative journalists writing for the sensationalist tabloids.- a group characterized by lack of success or status:
the literary demimonde.
Noted in “To the People Who Want to Spend 36 Hours in Washington,” Kriston Capps, CityLab:
Maybe you read in The New York Times that Showtime is the best bar in Washington, D.C., for “nightcapping with the demimonde.” Sorry. That is not something we do here. That is not something anyone has done anywhere since the Civil War. Piqued and stimulated Times readers should try a different bar—I hear they have loads of demimondes in Brooklyn. For anyone else confused about when D.C. shed its longtime status as a “white male fiefdom,” or when we opened our first non–steak house restaurant, or when we started to matter as a place, consider our recent reporting.
