Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also trade tricks) to work as a prostitute.

1620		Rowlands Night Raven 1: Whores and Whore-mongers trading for the Pox.
1623		Fletcher & Rowley Maid in the Mill V ii: otrante: Then you have traded? florimell: Traded? how should I know else how to live Sir, And how to satisfie such Lords as you are, Our best guests, and our richest?
1642		J. Taylor St Hillarie’s Teares 5: If you step aside [...] where thoses Doves of Venus, those Birds of youth, and beauty (the wanton Ladies) do build their nests, you shall finde them in such a dump of amazement, to see the hopes of their trading frustrate.
1661		‘Peter Aretine’ Strange Newes 2: Peg. Marry, I meet with merry Hectors, and trade with none but such as come on nobly, fall on neatly and retreat gallantly.
1671		‘A Song’ in Ebsworth Westminster Drolleries (1875) 7: The pleasant shades are for her that trades: Let’s truck and go together.
c.1700		London-Bawd (1705) 8: Have you but one Whore in the House, that you make me thus stand empty-handed [...] while my Companion’s trading with the other?
1783		Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies 7: [O]ne of the most conspicuous in the list of trading nymphs.
1851		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 28 June n.p.: The ladies are all find of trading with him.
1931		Arrow (Sydney) 23 Dec. 4/1: [of gay men] They addressed each other as ‘Marie’ or ‘Sybil.’ [...] and there were frequent references as to how ‘tradiing’ was going.
1957		C. MacInnes City of Spades (1964) 74: Chicks of all activities and descriptions, some trading, and others voluntary companions full of hope.
1999		J. Maple Crime Fighter 149: [A]ddict prostitutes trading tricks on the next street over.

2. to go looking for sexual partners.

c.1790		‘The Munster-Man’s Bothabue’ Luke Caffrey’s Gost 2: I am a blade that loves to trade among the pretty maids.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).

3. of a heterosexual man, to have sex with a homosexual partner.

1981		(con. 1979) J. Weeks ‘Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes’ in Journal Homosexuality (1980/81) VI Fall/Winter 121: I have never cared for trading with homosexuals . . . I always wanted to trade with men.
1993		R. Shell Iced 196: All he wanted to do was suck me off [...] We’d either go to a club or his place and ‘trade.’.