placket, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

placket n.

[SE placket, the slit at the top of an apron or petticoat, facilitating dressing and undressing; note Shakespearian uses of placket as a double entendre, e.g. in Love’s Labours Lost, The Winter’s Tale and Troilus and Cressida]

1. (also placket-box, placket-hole, placket lace, placket well) the vagina.

1593		Passionate Morrice (1876) 53: She cast her eyes vp to Heauen, as if she had been making her praiers to loue, sighing so bitterly, as I thought hir placket lace would haue broken. [Ibid.] 95: Seeing he crept so farre into credit with her, as he crackt her placket lace, how coold he of conscience call that iesting?
1595		‘W.S.’ Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine III iv: O codpeece, thou hast done thy maister, this it is to bemedling with warme plackets.
c.1602		Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida II iii: After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! or, rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse dependant on those that war for a placket.
1608		Dekker Honest Whore Pt 2 (1630) V ii: Mary come out, y’are so busie about my Petticoate, you’ll creepe vp to my placket.
1616		Webster Duchess of Malfi IV ii: A snuffling knave, that while he shows the tombs, will have his hand in a wench’s placket.
1623		Massinger Bondman II i: Your rambling hunt-smocke feeles strange alterations, And in a Frosty morning, lookes as if He could with ease creepe in a pottle Pot, In stead of his Mistris placket.
1648		R. Herrick ‘Saint Distaffs day’ Hesperides 374: If the Maides a spinning goe, / Burne the flax, and fire the tow: / Scorch their plackets, but beware / That ye singe no maiden-haire .
c.1650		‘Fingallian Dance’ in Carpenter Verse in English from Tudor & Stuart Eng. (2003) 310: Fen de catch at their Plack-keet, / The Maids of y-yore / Wou’d cree.
1654		Mercurius Fumigosus 13-20 Sept. 7: The City Knockers the last Night going the rounds, at Hide-park Corner met with a Regiment of Shee-Troopers [...] and coasting them, they advancing their Pizzles, put them to the rows as far as Placket Well, where they had the Plunder of them.
1655		Mercurius Fumigosus 69 12-19 Sept. 7: The Shee-Commons put out an Act this Week, for destroying of Crab-lice, &c. many of their Members being wonderly tormented with the same; they being Voted Vermin, were Ordered [...] to be drowned on the brink of Placket-Well.
1663		Wandering-Whores Complaint 2: If I meet a Cull in Moor-fields, I can give him leave to dive in my Placket whilst I Fyle his Cly, at which work my Fingers are as nimble as an Eele.
c.1670		broadside ballad in Adlard Fruit of That Forbidden Tree (1975) 31: She gave to me a syrup sweet / Was in her placket box.
1675		Head Nugae Venales 81: The other replyed (espying a Fellow groping a Wench in the Gallery) let us go to the Hand in Placket.
c.1684		‘Billy and his Mistress’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads (1878) II 504: Prithee, my Billy, now do not mistrust, / In Pocket and placket to thee I’le be just.
1689		‘A Cruel & Bloody declaration’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng in 18C Ireland (1998) 42: Ille vobis send vult Papissae Placket & partum.
1699		‘Prodigals Resolution’ in Playford Pills to Purge Melancholy I 60: In Play-houses I’ll spend my days, / For they’re hung round with Plackets; / Ladies make Room, behold I come, / Have at your Knocking Jackets.
1707		‘My Thing is my Own’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) I 195: A blunt Lieutenant surpriz’d my Placket, / And fiercely began to rifle and sack it.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 20: Here was a Hand, and their [sic] was a Placket. [Ibid.] V 90: A Wench, quoth he, / Gave Snuff to me, / Out of her Placket box, Sir; / And I am sure, / She prov’d a Whore, / And given to me the Pox, Sir.
1734		C. Johnson Hist. of Highwaymen &c. 192: She was very well skill’d too in the Affairs of the Placket among the Great Ones.
1759–67		Sterne Tristram Shandy (1949) 261: The abbess of Quedlinberg, who, with [...] the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior canoness, had that week come to Strasburg to consult the university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket holes.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 376: Kept all their loving spouses plackets / From being trimm’d by Trojan jackets.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) II 165: [as cit. 1772].
1840		‘My Thing Is My Own’ in Fake Away Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 284: A blunt Lieutenant surprised my placket, / And fiercely began to plunder and sack it .
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 208: Pelisson, m. The female pudendum; ‘the placket-box’.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Aug. 24/3: I noticed the other day, in an essay by Havelock Ellis, the following curious and significant phrase: ‘The perpetual itch to circle round sexual matters, accompanied by a timidity which makes it impossible to come right up to them; this sort of impotent fumbling in woman’s placket holes.’ Does anything better describe the mental attitude of the presumably reader, certainly purchaser of the daily papers?
1927		‘J.M. Hall’ Anecdota Americana I 84: But when his fingers were dangerously near her placket she turned on him suddenly and glared angrily.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 Winter 182: The simplest words in common use for this ‘nasty thing’ [...] are those accepting the female sexual apparatus as a simple receptacle. These include [...] pit, placket and many others.

2. (also placket-lady) a woman considered only as a sex object, a prostitute.

1622		Massinger Virgin-Martyr II iii: theop.: Away, away! hir.: I to my sweet placket.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

In compounds

placket-bobbing (n.)

enjoying heterosexual intercourse.

1672

J. Phillips Maronides (1678) V 96: Will he a while leave placket-bobbing, / And for a Steed leave riding wenches.

placket-broaker (n.)

see broker n.¹

placket-racket (n.) [SE racket, an implement for hitting balls]

the penis.

1653		Urquhart (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) I Bk I 44: Another again [would call it] her branch of coral, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her tit-bit, her bob-lady.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1925		E. Field ‘A French Crisis’ Facetiae Americana 20: These other virgas, placket-rackets, pintles, stunts and jocks.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 191: Thus [...] the kennedy (= poker) pokes the fires of Hell, the wedge enters the crack and the placket-racket engages with the placket.

placket-stung (adj.)

suffering from a venereal disease.

1768

J. Ray Eng. Words Not Generally Used (4th edn) n.p.: Placket-stung.

In phrases

search the placket (v.)

to have sexual intercourse, esp. with a prostitute or mistress.

1719

in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 324: My Landlady knew, / I’d been searching the Placket.

tear one’s placket (v.)

of a woman, to lose one’s virginity.

?1600		J. Day Blind Beggar of Bednall-Green Act IV: Come then my mad Viragoes I have spent many a gray groat of honest swaggerers, and tear-Plackets in my daies that I never drunk for, and now I’ll turn swaggerer my self.
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.