Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a prostitute, ‘a Whore of Quality’ (B.E.); a kept woman.

1512		Hickscorner Cv: If thou wylt forsake thy mysse Surely thou shalte come to the blysse And be inherytoure of heuen.
1662		J. Evelyn Diary 9 Jan. (1850) I 359: In this acted the fir and famous comedian called Roxalana [...] she being taken to be the Earle of Oxford’s Miss (as at this time they began to call lewd women).
1675		Character of a Town-Miss in C. Hindley Old Bk Collector’s Misc. 1: A Miss is a Name, which the Civility of this Age bestows on one, that our unmannerly Ancestors call’d Whore and Strumpet.
1680		T. Betterton Match in Newgate I ii: A Whore! Oh call her a Miss, a Ladie of the Town, a Beautie of delight, or any thing. Whore! ’tis a nauseous name.
1683		London Jilt pt 1 A3: The many Discoveries that have been made [...] of the Subtilties and Cheats that the Misses of this Town put upon Men.
1683		Fifteen Real Comforts of Matrimony 97: These maxims the Town-Misses are not ignorant of.
1691		‘The Virgin’s Complaint’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads (1878) II 930: I was never Miss nor Whore, / I ne’er had my Placket tore.
1701		N. Ward ‘A Walk to Islington’ Writings (1704) 65: And that you may know such a good Wife as this, / From buxom Suburbian, or common Town Miss, / In Colours most proper her Picture I’ll Paint, / And shew you a Devil drest up like a Saint.
c.1707		‘The Suburbs is a Fine Place’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 115: Where Fop and Miss, like Dog and Bitch, do couple under Benches.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy V 65: [title] The Misses Complaint .
1721		Penkethman’s Jests 55: An effeminate Fop calling his Whore his Miss.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 85: By soft and gentle Steps he makes his Approaches towards Happiness, Miss lying the while very circumspect to watch his Entrance.
1748–49		Cleland Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 85: Without adding to the guilt of my infidelity that of an audacious defense of it, in the old style of a common kept Miss, my answer was modest. [Ibid.] 127: I had neither the feathers, nor fumet of a tawdry town-miss.
1775		J. Ash Dict. Eng. Lang.
1786		Burns The Inventory (1904) 225: I ha’e nae wife, and that my bliss is. An’ ye haue laid nae tax on misses [...] My sonsie smirking dear-bought Bess.
c.1790		‘The Rakes of Mallow’ Luke Caffrey’s Gost 2: Keeping misses but no wives, / Live the Rakes of Mallow.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 96: ‘The lucky hit was all a miss.’ ‘Yes, there was a Miss taken, and a Biter bit. Love is a lottery as well as life.’.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 55: miss A mistress.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 201/1: The women of the town [...] kept misses, and such like.
1886		M.E. Braddon Mohawks III 25: She is some vizard Miss that ought to be sitting in the slips, I’ll be sworn.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 49: Miss, a mistress.

2. the vagina.

1898

‘Mary Suckit’ Yvonne 17: The dreadful thing of which she did not know the name pointed just toward the woman’s gaping miss.