Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) a contraceptive sheath, a condom.

1999

G. Seal Lingo 126: In Lingo, condoms are [...] sporting equipment.

a male homosexual prostitute.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 144: They joke about themselves as crack salesmen, dealers in sporting goods, Circus cowboys (U.S. midnight cowboys), and faggot workers.

a brothel, gambling den or a public house frequented by ‘the Fancy’.

1800		‘Moll In The Wood’ Garland of New Songs 2: Moll of the wood lives alone, / She keeps a sporting house of her own, / And every man that doth pass by, / She tips them in with a rolling eye. [...] Moll of the wood she lives alone, / She keeps a bawdy house of her own.
1824		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 31 Oct. 317/2: It was a hasty match for 10l. knocked up on Tuesday at a sporting-house on the road from Lalam’s.
1832		Satirist (London) 15 Jan. 23/1: The One Tun tavern [...] has been known for some time as a ‘sporting house,’ and the resort of all the blacklegs about town. It has [...] carried on the double business of a gaming-house.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 3 Jan. 2/2: A general adjournment took place 'o the sporting crib in the neighbourhood.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Apr. 2/7: The sporting landlord of that sporting crib, the Australian Inn.
1855		Broadway Belle (NY) 29 Jan. n.p.: Major Richardson [...] keeps a sporting house for the literary, dramatic and pugilistic ‘fancy’.
1857		J.E. Ritchie Night Side of London 122: The prizefighter, when his day is over, generally keeps a public-house, which is generally called a sporting-house.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 1 Aug. 2/5: Old Popkins’s hostelry was not what is commonly called a ‘sporting house,’ but amongst Its [...] customers were some young men who affected a considerable acquaintance with the Turf and the Ring.
1860		R.S. Surtees Plain or Ringlets? (1926) 389: I never see a young fellow setting up a metallic penciled pocket-book, and sneaking [...] into what is miscalled a sporting house, without feeling that sooner or later he will be ruined.
1867		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 7 Dec. 2/4: [J]ogging along, arm in arm, [...] indulging freely in cock tails at the various sporting houses.
1869		C.G. Leland ‘Breitmann about Town’ Hans Breitmann About Town 9: Dey vent indo a shpordin’ crib / De rowdies cloostered dick, / Dey ashk him dell dem vot o’glock, / Und dat infernal quick.
1872		E. Crapsey Nether Side of NY 161: There is a sporting house in Houston street, one block east of Broadway [...] the resort of a low class of prostitutes, and of the ruffians and idlers who support the prize ring.
1878		J.H. Beadle Western Wilds 46: He strayed into one of our sporting rooms.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 12 June 2/3: The gambling mania has reached Auckland. Michael Gallagher, who keeps a ‘sporting’ house in that town, has been fined in the Police Court for allowing professional ‘speelers’ to play in his house.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 14 Jan. 11/1: Now, I am told that Ryan keeps a sporting house, and that is dead against him. A man can't keep a saloon and be a good prize-fighter .
1887		Lantern (N.O.) 6 Oct. 2: The keeper of a sporting mansion [...] a dizzy dusky damsel.
1893		J. Hawthorne Confessions of Convict 44: We used to meet at [...] a noted sporting resort.
1909		I.L. Nascher Wretches of Povertyville 42: Its gambling houses, its opium joints, its sporting houses and all that went to make up the Bowery of old.
1926		W.H. Davies Adventures of Johnny Walker 14: ‘It is a sporting house,’ he answered, which in England would be called a brothel.
1935		W. Smith Bessie Cotter 85: Nobody forced me into a sporting-house. I did it because I wanted to.
1947		C. Willingham End as a Man (1952) 126: They used to have their favourite nigger gals on the plantation, their favourite creole gals in the sporting houses.
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 106: Charlie was supposed to have picked up that moniker of ‘Pretty Boy’ from the girls in the sporting houses up around Thirteenth and Cherry.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 154: He goin’ to set me up en mah own sportin house.
1976		E. Dahlberg Olive of Minerva 145: There is no sporting-house vast enough to contain your Academe of harlots.
1986		S. Longstreet (ref. to 1917) Storyville to Harlem 59: When the Navy closed the sporting houses of Storyville in 1917, a lot of jazz musicians working for coffee and cakes, a survival income, were out in the cold.
1992		Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore II 595: Sport once referred almost exclusively to sexual play [...] in such out-dated phrases as ‘sporting house’ (of prostitution).

a prostitute, esp. when employed in a brothel.

a.1712		N. Ward T- B-’s Last Letter in Misc. III 6: Venture half a Crown upon his [i.e. the penis] Head, like a bold Gamster, and match your Cock with the next fair Sports-Woman you meet.
1721		N. Ward Northern Cuckold in Misc. IV 5: Sporting Ladies are such Witches, No Bars can keep ’em from the Breeches.
c.1770		[title] A List of the Sporting Ladies.
c.1780		pamphlet title The only true list, of those celebrated SPORTING LADIES, or Petticoat Amblers, who afford the Bucks and Bloods an amorous Felicity every Evening during the RACES.
c.1785		‘The New Dhooraling’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 400: The sporting girls take great delight / In his sweet company day and night.
1787		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 69: [She] promises to make as good a sportswoman as any in the Park.
1788		‘The New Dhooraling’ Chap Book Songs 4: The sporting girls take great delight in his sweet company day and night.
1793		Sporting Mag. May II 103/1: Very few of these gentlemen but what have a sporting lady and a gig in their retinue.
1801		Sporting Mag. May XVIII 110/2: Zounds! here’s not only Sporting Steeds, / But also Sporting Ladies!
1820		Morn. Post (London) 15 Aug. 1/4: Sporting damsels of Turf celebrity [...] laid under the sod by the unceremonious and civil Doctor Lushington.
1822		‘The Sprees of Tom, Jerry and Logick’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 124: The prigs and sporting ladies all joined in the row.
1887		Lantern (N.O.) 12 Nov. 4: A fifty dollar bill to a sporting woman for her to keep mum.
1915		G. Bronson-Howard God’s Man 190: Nice business – a judge with a sporting-girl on his lap.
1922		M. Bodenheim ‘Poetry’ in Introducing Irony 68: I am a sporting lady from the roadhouse down the way.
1929		E. Dahlberg Bottom Dogs 174: A lot of sporting women stayed there.
1939		W. Attaway Let Me Breathe Thunder (1940) 225: With a rooster like me in her house Mag was the target of every sporting woman in the West.
1941		Warner, Junker & al. Color & Human Nature 254: ‘The only fault was that the neighborhood was infested with sporting women and pimps. I was never permitted to go out alone’.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 220: sporting woman A whore.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 203/2: Sporting-girls’ manager. A pimp.
a.1955		‘Pimping Sam’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 148: Sometimes I’m known as Ginger Sweet, / Sweet-Dick Daddy, sporting woman’s treat.
1972		(con. 1950s) D. Goines Whoreson 93: Four sporting girls still in their teens.
1977		H. Crews Feast of Snakes 14: He done locked up Lottie Mae again [...] Say she a sportin lady.
1980		(con. 1950s) M. Thelwell Harder They Come 24: Some a the Christian people [...] them no like Miss Ida. [...] Dem say she a sportin lady.
1989		(con. 1930s) Courtwright & Des Jarlais Addicts Who Survived 210: I had a friend, she was a sporting girl, a top-notch booster.
2001		(con. late 19C) C. Jeffords Shady Ladies of the Old West 🌐 The euphemisms for prostitution were many [...] ‘the fair and frail,’ ‘ladies of the line,’ and ‘sporting women,’ besides ‘soiled doves.’.

see separate entry.

1. one who lives a hedonistic, enjoyable life; the implication is of his lacking the qualities of a gentleman.

1803		‘A Pembrochian’ Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 127: A sporting man; a dashing fellow; a statute breaker; a Newmarket lounger.
1843		John Bull 9 Dec. 782/1: From the New Sporting Magazine we extract a sketch of a numerous class of our cockney population, whom the writer calls ‘sporting men,’ in contradistinction to ‘sportsmen’.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 19: He was well dressed, yet the flashiness of the sporting man, ‘stuck out’ a little.
1849		G.G. Foster N.Y. in Slices 27: If you wish to visit a first-rate gambling-house, you had better make the acquaintance of some gentlemanly blackleg – ‘sporting-man’ is the title by which he prefers to be known.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 314: There being an evident confusion in their minds between the characters of sportsmen and sporting men, or gents as they are called.
1980		(con. 1950s) M. Thelwell Harder They Come 29: Two sporting man like unu can’t eat without music.

2. (also sporting gent) a genteel term for a gambler.

1742		Account of Behaviour, Confessions, and Dying Words 2/2: He got acquainted with a noted Fellow known by the Name of Shock Egerton, who soon brought him among the Sporting-Men, so that Walters made Shift in less than two Years to exhaust the best Part of his Substance.
1828		‘A Flat Enlightened’ Life in the West I 67: ‘[S]porting men (which is only another term for gamblers) are all alike’.
1833		in M. James Andrew Jackson (1937) 7/1: Sporting men were willing to wager that the deposits would be removed [DA].
1837		R. Barham ‘The Lay of St. Odile’ Ingoldsby Legends (1840) 252: Now I think I’ve been told, – for I’m no sporting man, / That the ‘knowing-ones’ call this by far the best plan.
1849		Royal Cornwall Gaz. 28 Sept. n.p.: The Sports are begun, the horses are off / [...] / While prancing around on his high-mettled horse, / The small Sporting Gent is the Swell of the Course!
1851		Western Police Gaz. (Cincinnati, OH) 29 Mar. n.p.: About 40 sporting gents were strung together with iron bracelets.
c.1858		J.H. Green Reformed Gambler 195: You must know that the New York sporting men are not so low and contemptible, nor will their friends who know them of old allow the supposition to rest.
1860		R.S. Surtees Plain or Ringlets? (1926) 60: [C]onfusing the term sportsmen with sporting men (alias gamblers).
1871		Galaxy (N.Y.) July 67: Strictly speaking, more ‘cappers’ than gamblers, they are not only at the bottom of the profession, but their right to the proud title of ‘sporting men’ is stoutly denied by their more prosperous and reputable brethren of the green cloth.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 415: A sportin’, flashy sort ’er gent [...] ’ad a snug little crib, ’bout four mile out’er town.
1906		G.R. Sims Mysteries of Modern London 92: I saw him in fine feather and quite the ‘sporting gent’ [...] at Nice races.
1924		W.J. McConnell Frontier Law 115: All ‘sporting men’ should leave within a stated time [DA].