callet, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

callet n.

also callat, callot

[? Fr. cailette, a fool, lit. ‘a small quail’; Fr. calotte, a skullcap; Gaelic caille, a girl; Nares, Glossary (1822), suggests that ‘it is more likely to have been derived from the personage of [...] Callot, Kit. The fair, or perhaps more properly the brown associate of one Giles Hather. They are supposed to have been the first couple of English persons who took up the occupation of gipsies’]

a whore, a promiscuous woman.

1515		Cocke Lorelles Bote I: Yf he call her calat, she calleth hym knaue agayne.
1517		Skelton Elynour Rummynge line 346: Ye callettes, I shall breke your palettes, Wythout ye now cease!
1532		T. More Confutation of Tyndale Answer VIII Pt I 181: Frere Luther and Cate calate hys nonne lye luskynge together in lechery.
c.1535		R. Copland Hye way to the Spyttel House Eiiii: The sisterhod of drabbess, sluttess and callets / Do here resorte, with thyr bagets and wallets.
1545		J. Skelton Bokes n.p.: She was a cumly callet.
1562–3		Stationers’ Register in Arber Iine 208: Recevyd of Alexandre Lacye for his lycense for pryntinge of a boke intituled the xx orders of Callettes or Drabbys.
1575		‘Mr. S’ Gammer Gurton’s Needle in Whitworth (1997) III iii: A carte for a callet.
c.1590		Greene James IV IV iv: You calletta, you strumpetta.
1592		Shakespeare Henry VI Pt 2 I iii: Contemptuous base-born callot as she is.
1594		Greene & Lodge Looking-Glass for London and England in Dyce Works (1861) 131: What, succour me! false callet, hence, avaunt!
1604		Shakespeare Othello IV ii: He called her a whore; a beggar in his drink Could not have laid such terms upon his callat.
1610		Rowlands Martin Mark-all II 57: The first that inuented this new fellowship was one Giles Hather: he carried about with him his whore called Kyt Calot which was termed the Queene of Egypties.
1616		W. Haughton English-Men For My Money D: You sullen Elfe, you Callet, Is this the haste you make?
1621		Jonson Gypsies Metamorphosed 10: We haue beene readie with the Egiptian bralls to see Kitt-Callot forthe in prose or ryme.
1641		S. Marmion Antiquary Act IV: I did not think a man of your age and beard had been so lascivious to keep a disguis’d callet under my nose.
1786		Burns The Jolly Beggars in Works (1842) 13/1: Here’s to all the wandering train! Here’s our ragged brats and callets!
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime in Poetical Works 2 (1878) 335: Tribad, Hoyden, Skinflint, Quean, / Pidget, Flirt, Minx, Doxy, Callet.