Demi-monde

Demi-monde (Fr. demi, 'half,' and monde, 'world,' or 'society'), a term that came into vogue from the title of a play by the younger Dumas (1855), as applied to a class of women in large towns, and especially Paris, whose disregard for the proprieties prevents their being more than half recognised by society. The word covers women of all degrees of disrespectability, provided only they respect the elegancies of life.—Demi-rep is a similar 18th-century word, compounded clumsily enough, for a woman of more than doubtful reputation.