Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a prostitute.

1512		Hickscorner Ci: What ye dawes wolde redeed me For to lesse my pleasure in youth and jolyte To basse and kysse my sweete trully mully As Jane Cate Besse and Sybble.
1519		J. Rastell The Four Elements line 1266: For to satisfye your wanton lust, I shall apoynt you a trull of trust.
1533		J. Heywood Play of Love in Farmer Dramatic Writings (1905) 154: I thus decked at all points point device, / At door where this trull was I was as a trice.
1566		T. Drant (trans.) ‘The seconde Satyre’ Horace his Satyres Bk I Avii: The stewes, and stained house of drabbes [...] The beggers, and the tumblynge trulles.
1573		T. Tusser Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1878) 85: Sow pease (good trull).
1581		B. Riche Farewell to Military Profession (1992) 176: That villain whoremonger and his trull.
1591		Greene Notable Discovery of Coosnage in Grosart (1881–3) X 40: These trafickes, these common truls I meane, walke abroad either in the fields or streetes that are commonly hanted, as stales to draw men into hell.
1605		Chapman All Fooles IV i: I will not hear a word; out, out upon thee! Wed without my advice, my love, my knowledge, Ay, and a beggar, too, a trull, a blowse!
1611		Davies of Hereford Scourge of Folly 40: I maruell that Sardinius is so old, When he is Cocking still with euery Trull.
c.1621		Beaumont & Fletcher Wild-Goose-Chase IV ii: A Dairy-Maid? A Tinkers-Trull: Heaven bless me.
1630		J. Taylor ‘Taylors Goose’ in Works (1869) I 110: There sits a Cheater with a simple Gull, / And there an honest woman, there a Trull.
c.1635		W. Cartwright Ordinary IV i: I took one Andrew Credulous this morning / In dishonest adultery with a trull.
1639		Ford Lady’s Trial III i: Wench is your trull, your blouze, your dowdie.
1642		St Hilary’s Tears in Harleian Misc. II (1809) 215: From the Covent-Garden Lady of Iniquity, to the Turnbal-street Trull.
1659		Greene & Lodge Lady Alimony II vi: Yes, that’s the plague on’t, – lose a light-heel’d trull.
1661		‘Peter Aretine’ Strange Newes title: Also the mad flights [...] used by the Wandring-Whore, her Bawds, Mobs, Panders, Pads and Trulls for the drawing of young Hectors.
1671		‘A Furious Scold’ in Ebsworth Westminster Drolleries (1875) 37: Was ever a man so vex’d with a Trull.
1678		J. Ray Proverbs (2nd edn) 75: Wenches are tinkers bitches, girles are pedlars trulls, and modhdhers are honest mens daughters.
1680		M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 118: Must Country Trulls have all the sport / And starve the Ladyes of the Court?
1699		N. Ward London Spy VII 173: Soldiers and their Trulls were Skipping and dancing about to most Lamentable Musick.
1706		Fifteen Comforts of Cuckoldom 6: To have her full / Of sport, she’s run away a Soldier’s Trull.
1714		A. Smith Lives of Most Noted Highway-men, etc. I 77: The Trull, fearing they should then be put to a Non-plus, she wav’d ’em.
1722		‘Whipping-Tom’ Expensive Use of Drinking Tea I 16: There is scarce a Trull in any Market about London, or Mechanicks Drab but what must have her Load of hot Water and Sugar, five or six Times a Day.
1732		Ladies Delight 28: The Dunghill Trapes, trickt up like virtuous Trull.
1748		Smollett Roderick Random (1979) 279: In short, Strap, it is my opinion that you are egregiously imposed upon; and that this friend is no other than a rascal who wants to palm his trull upon you for a wife.
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 23: This bouncing Trull can finely talk, / she will do for a Penny.
1761		Nancy Dawson’s Jests 36: No longer shall trudge, now each draggle tail trull, / Thro hail, rain or snow, to pick up a cull.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 249: He met the devil of a flock [...] Of soldier’s trulls, and other harlots.
1785		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘The Lousiad’ Works (1794) I 208: A vile old trull!
1794		W. Godwin Caleb Williams (1966) 62: By and by she would be a whore, and at last no better than a common trull, and rot upon a dunghill.
1803		C.K. Sharpe letter 23 July Correspondence (1888) I 178: Not so my Lord C., who will drink with any one, and moreover keeps a trull at a turnpike gate about half a mile from Oxford.
1815		D. Humphreys Yankey in England 62: Tippling — gambling . . . or running after the trulls, like the Count!
1818		W. Perry London Guide 118: Many are the gradations from that highest degree of prostitiution, down to the trulls that parade the streets by day.
1820		‘Jacko and Judas’ Slops Shave at a Broken Hone 21: To the great mirth of orange-girls and [...] trulls, tinkers, crimps, and tailors.
1838		R. Nicholson Cockney Adventures 3 Feb. 111: Sergeant Terry, usually came home accompanied by one of those ladies of easy virtue and accommodating manners, ycleped soldiers’ trulls.
1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus 34: An anti-room is mostly filled with coal-heavers, their ‘vim-men,’ costermongers and dolls, soldiers with their trulls.
1855		Yokel’s Preceptor 9: Flabby Poll. This is a dirty slovenly trull, a regular lushington and prig.
1862		Dundee Courier 26 Nov. 4/2: It may be that ‘levanting’ is scarcely a proper term for the flight of a trull and her paramour.
1871		M. Clarke Old Tales of a Young Country 13: He was detected in picking the pocket of a trull in Drury-lane Theatre.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 11: Trull - Contraction of ‘troll’ or ‘trollop’.
1895		W.R. Cobbe Dr. Judas, A Portrayal of the Opium Habit 160: He may be and often is a criminal; this habit being on the increase among trulls, (who add thieving to their nefarious business).
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 5 Oct. 3/4: The Chinaman’s trull, Jessie ;lennox.
1927		A. Hayward in Brown Amusements Serious and Comical [Intro.] xv: He [...] carried on amours with women of no reputation at all — mere trulls whom he picked up in the shadiest haunts and alleys.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 239: He is as aisy wid an owld trull, and with a young wan too, be japers, as he is with the most innocent and schwell young gurrl.
1954		(con. 1940s) T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of the Wind 144: Just let any Jap trull come near me, and I’ll show her the way out.
1973		R. Todasco Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Dirty Words.

2. a tinker’s or soldier’s companion.

1630		Tinker of Turvey Epistle 1: Many a Tinkers Trull haue I bum-fiddled.
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 66: One all in Armour Back and Brest / [...] / The other a fat bossie Trull.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
1738		Newcastle Courant 1 July n.p.: The honest man was put in such a good humour, that soon after he married a Soldier and his Trull gratis.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1879		London Standard 6 Dec. 2/1: Some of these beggar’s trulls are women with curious histories.

3. a sluttish, idling woman.

1837

Thackeray Yellowplush Papers in Works III (1898) 247: Look here, sir [...] at the conduck of your precious trull of a daughter.