A formal or literary term for a female sex worker. In everyday conversation, more common words like 売春婦 or 風俗嬢 are often used.
Many women became prostitutes because of poverty.
In 19th-century Paris, many prostitutes worked in specific districts.
その小説の主人公は、貧しさから娼婦になった女性だ。
The protagonist of that novel is a woman who became a prostitute due to poverty.
She worked as a prostitute for a while.
The man paid for a prostitute in the port town.
風俗嬢 specifically refers to women working in Japan's modern sex industry (fuzoku), whereas 娼婦 is a broader, more old-fashioned term for a prostitute.
counter for people
high-class prostitute; courtesan
Composed of 娼 (しょう, 'prostitute') and 婦 (ふ, 'woman'). The kanji 娼 is a phono-semantic compound, with 女 (woman) as the semantic component and 昌 (しょう) as the phonetic. The word is a Sino-Japanese compound, likely coined in the Meiji period or earlier as a formal term.