Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a dandy, a rake, one who is ‘given to elegant dissipation’ (OED).

c.1597		Shakespeare Henry IV Pt 1 II iv: They [...] tell me flatly I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff; but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy.
1673		M. Stevenson Norfolk Drollery 66: Well then, by this I see that every Man / Is not cut out for a Corinthian.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Corinthian, a very impudent, harden’d, brazen-fac’d Fellow.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Corinthians [...] an impudent brazen faced fellow, perhaps from the corinthian brass.
c.1815		J.K. Paulding Bucktails (1847) III ii: You’ll be cut by all the fashionable Corinthians, for preferring ladies to the bottle.
1824		J. Wight Mornings in Bow St. 67: Christopher Clutterbuck and Dionysius Dobbs [...] were Corinthians — that is to say, in the fashion of the time, gentlemen who were ‘up, down, and fly to every thing’.
1827		Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.) 1 Feb. 2/3: On Saturday night five Corinthians sallied from the Lafayette Theatre, determined in true ‘Tom and Jerry’ style, to have a ‘swell’.
1832		Egan Bk of Sports 4: With an eye-glass to stare his way into elegant society amongst the Corinthians.
1837		‘All the Corinthians Out on a Spree’ in Flash Olio in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 190: All the Corinthians are out on a spree. / Many a shatter’d pane, marks the road they have ta’en, / Many a gas-lamp extinguish’d and broken.
1845		Bell’s Life in Sydney 6 Sept. 4/3: There being about 150 persons on board including [...] a fair sprinkling of ‘Corinthians’.
1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus 24: Corinthians, dons, swells, swankeys here accumulate warming their conks over a well digested root.
1854		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) II 153: Those playfuly frolicsome ‘Frolics of the Fancy’, in which nobly born but ignobly-minded ‘Corinthians’ formerly invested so much interest and money.
1855		(con. 1811) Fights for the Championship 46: There were about 20,000 persons present, inclusding many Corinthians of the highest rank.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 25 July 3/4: Nat Langham made a collection among a few Corinthians frequenting his house.
1860		R. Nicholson Rogue’s Progress (1966) 41: There was likewise in the neighbourhood a resort of the Corinthians of that time, Offley’s, in Henrietta Street.
1866		H.D. Miles Tom Sayers 7: A number of gentlemen, officers of the Guards, and sporting Corthinians.
1876		H.E. Malet Annals of the Road 90: [T]he celebrated young cantab, Mr. Stevenson, who did so much [...] to elevate the science and heighten the tone of the thing, bringing Corinthian and coachman more on a level.
1886		Sporting Times 13 Feb. 5/5: After a merry mill [...] a ‘Corinthian’ took him for a ‘bung’.
1898		Binstead & Wells A Pink ’Un and a Pelican 89: [They] witnessed [...] two rounds of as lively a ‘mill’ between a couple of as smart middle-weights as the keenest Corinthian could desire.
1900		Sporting Times 12 May 2/1: In company with (I suppose) as ‘warm’ a lot of blue-blooded ‘Corinthians’ as went racing.
1927		(con. 1835–40) P. Herring Bold Bendigo 92: I mean you may be a sporting Corinthian to your friends, but you’re a cowardly hound to women.

2. a regular frequenter of a brothel.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.

3. (US) a high-class courtesan.

1859

Matsell Vocabulum 21: corinthians Bad women who move in respectable society.