noun
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.
19世紀のパリでは、多くの娼婦が特定の地区で働いていた。
In 19th-century Paris, many prostitutes worked in specific districts.
その小説の主人公は、貧しさから
The protagonist of that novel is a woman who became a prostitute due to poverty.
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.