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A whore is a woman prostitute or any woman or man who engages in sexual activity that is deemed immoral or culturally unacceptable. Throughout much of modern history, the term has been used negatively, to condemn or chastise and to indicate wrongdoing. However, historical evidence suggests that, prior to the advent of Christianity, some women acted as sacred whores in the service of religions that revered such sexual service instead of condemning it. In such societies, the term whore was a label of respect.

In ancient cultures such as Babylonia, India, and Israel, temples dedicated to certain goddesses included temple prostitutes, sacred women whose sexual service functioned as both a self-sacrifice to the goddess and a means for men to commune with the goddess through spiritualized sex. In ancient Babylonia, Ishtar was worshipped as a major goddess, superior even to the sun god. Within her temples, young women willingly lost their virginity as temple prostitutes. In ancient Greece, the name for such women was horae, a term that also refers to the three goddesses who represented both the hours and the three seasons of growth (spring/fertility, summer/growth, and fall/harvest). The similarity between the Greek horae and the English whore (originally spelled hore) suggest that the English term has linguistic connections with an ancient title designating divine qualities.

When Christianity's belief in a single masculine god replaced many pagan belief systems in Europe and Asia, sex became vilified as unholy and too worldly. The term whore, much like the women themselves, acquired a negative connotation often linked with religious condemnation. In addition to chastising individuals, the term has also been used in a biblical sense to refer to sinful communities or organizations that willfully go against the teachings of the church. In particular, the phrase ''the whore of Babylon,'' first used in the book of Revelation, refers to idolatrous or corrupt communities such as the Church of Rome, when used by its opponents.

Literary evidence shows that whores were a particular concern in Renaissance Europe. Many literary works published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries focus on whores as signs of sinfulness, witchcraft, and threats to marriage and childbearing, religion, and morality. Since the Christian church judged sexual desire as sinful, many women were branded as whores and witches, especially since women were thought to be more prone to the sin of carnal lust than men. The publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (The witch hammer) in 1486 linked heretical behavior with witchcraft, and its use as part of the Inquisition led to the deaths of between 600,000 and 9,000,000 people, most of whom were women. This religious fervor accounts for one motivation for persecuting whores. Another motivation was their potential economic power in a society that was becoming increasingly capitalistic. Now offering their services for money instead of for prestige, whores presented an economic danger via their accumulation of wealth in a system in which men presumably controlled the flow of money.

Although ''whore'' referred primarily to women prior to 1900 (with the exception of phrases such as ''he-whore'' and ''masculine whore''), more recent usage also applies to men. Slang usage of the term condemns an individual as sexually promiscuous or otherwise willing to compromise his or her morals in order to gain monetary or other compensation (for example, a ''corporate whore'').

References:

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edition. 1989. Prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Walker, Barbara G. 2000. Restoring The Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

White, E. M. 1924. Woman in World History: Her Place in the Great Religions. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited. 

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