Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a sexual athlete; a womanizer.

1553		S. Gardiner De Vera Obedientia To Reader Bj: [They] thinke it more mete for wanton wagtaile weston to be turned out for a stalaunt, [...] than to vse ani kinde of communication among worthi ladies.
1605		Chapman All Fooles III i: For thy brisk attire and lips perfum’d, Thou playest the stallion ever where thou com’st.
1610		Beaumont & Fletcher Scornful Lady III ii: You old he-goat, you dried ape, you lame stallion, Must you be leaping in my house? your whores, Like fairies dance their night-rounds, without fear.
1631		S. Marmion Holland’s Leaguer I iv: Their [women’s] unjust desires would ask the labours of some ten stallions.
1637		R. Brome Eng. Moor III i: That I may [...] Triumph / Over the lustful stallions of our time: / Bed-bounders, and leap-Ladies.
1656		Mennis & Smith ‘The Louse’s Peregrination’ Musarum Deliciae (1817) 49: Counting the English man but as a Stallion, / Leaving the Goat unto the Italian.
1661		Wandring Whore V 5: We have a thousand Presidents of women running from their husbands, and chusing other Stallions for their Guardians.
1673		‘Letter from a Missionary Bawd’ in Carpenter Verse in English from Tudor & Stuart Eng. (2003) 426: Her daughter Nicholl, on the world a skam, / Pretending kindred to her Stallion Cham.
1679		‘Colin’ in Wilson Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 25: She knew his ways and could comply / With all decays of lechery; Had often licked his amorous sceptre / Until the jaded stallion leapt her.
1682		‘Ballad’ in Wilson Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 106: The nimble Houghton and Jack Howe / Could not make her one stallion, / Nor Mulgrave nor Dumbarton though / Each helped by his battalion.
1698		N. Ward London Spy II 47: Which occasion’d us to think of Bed, tho’ with as much indifferency as a worn-out Stallion does of a pretty Punk.
1706		Answer to the Fifteen Comforts of Whoring 3: Then how he’d call me arrant Bitch and Whore, / And Swear some Stallion had been there before.
1724		‘John Sheppard’s Last Epistle’ in Dly Jrnl (London) 16 Nov. 1: To the Hundreds of Drury I write, / And to all my Filching Companions / The Buttocks who pad it all night, / The Wh-res, the Thieves, and the Stallions.
1732		Harlot’s Progress 14: Whither should the Baud and Miss go, / But to the Stallion, Don Francisco.
1748–49		Cleland Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 25: Her sturdy stallion had now unbutton’d.
1761		E. Thompson Meretriciad 11: Or to their arms secrete — the dearest Man / A vig’rous Stallion.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 216: As to that copper-nosed rabscallion, / Venus’s bully-back and stallion.
c.1780		Correct List of the Sporting Ladies [broadsheet] Two of her [i.e. a prostitute’s] Stallions having lately had the Misfortune to lose their Lives, by having their Collars too tight to the Paddington nevergreen Tree .
1786		Nunnery Amusements 3: At length the lusty Stallion firmly swore, / That he’d confess her Ladyship no more.
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow 111: To all pimps, bawds, whores and their stallions.
c.1800		Song No. 25 Papers of Francis Place (1819) [as 1790] .
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 42 166/2: Could you get none to serve but some Newgate stallion [...] that wrongs my bed.
1893		‘Bob Sterling’ Town-Bull 66: Quickly I, her last stallion, mounted her.
1902		D. St John Memoirs of Madge Buford 77: Oh! the wild animal cries of the lecherous stallion! [...] The wild thrusting of that immense probe.
1959		L. Lariar Death Is Confidential n.p.: She’s been tied in knots with so many stallions, no detective on earth could pick the right goon out of that mob in the restaurant.
1963		B. Hecht Gaily, Gaily 93: The jam of bosom-bouncing mares and feet-twirling stallions had thinned out.
1976		R. Price Blood Brothers 11: I tell everybody what a goddamn stallion my brother is.
1981		N. Farki Countryman Karl Black 85: Legs wide apart. [...] Oooh! A black stallion, a white mare.
2009		R. Milward Ten Storey Love Song 156: Ah, if only Johnnie was a stallion in bed.
2011		Times 19 July 2/1: We talk of young men with a high sex drive as stallions.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 918: I am always remembering Gentleman Teddy, putting old stallion through paces.

2. a courtesan, a kept woman [? Fr. estalon, a decoy, an enticement, or stale, the lowest class of prostitute].

1575		Laneham letter 17 July in Furnivall (1871) 24: Then folloed the worshipfull Bride [...] But a stale stallion and wel spred, [...] God wot, and an il smelling, waz she.
1584		B.R. (trans.) Herodotus ii 102 b: Willing her [...] to abandon chastity for the time, making hirselfe a common stalant for all that would come [OED].
c.1600		Shakespeare Hamlet II ii: I [...] must like a whore vnpacke my hart with words, And fall a cursing like a very drabbe; a stallyon.
1635		Long Meg of Westminster 9: Marry Master Vicar, quoth Meg, just five shillings and three pence. Five shillings and three pence, quoth he; why I tell thee foule Stallion, I owe but three shillings and a penny.
1659		Greene & Lodge Lady Alimony IV iii: Little good does that stud without a Stallion [...] Meanly manned, worse appointed, / Who would do if he knew how, / But, alas! he would, but cannot.
1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 32: And if thou stay’st that Rogue Pygmalion Intends to use thee like a stallion.
a.1670		J. Hacket Century Serm. (1675) 600: Doth the Adulterer look for impunity that he walks to his stallion by twilight?
1686		Rochester ‘Rochester’s Farewell’ Works (1718) I 167: Of numerous stallions let her not despair.
1977		J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 183: ‘My redhead,’ he’d say. ‘My big stallion.’ [...] ‘You look at any dude out here got a real strong game together like I do, it’s cause they got theyself a strong lady like this one. Got theyself a woman knows what she is about.’.

3. a heterosexual male prostitute or kept man.

1623		Massinger Duke of Milan IV ii: He [...] that at euerie stage keeps liuerie Mistresses, The stallion of the State!
1676		T. Shadwell Virtuoso Act IV: What are you, her Stallion, and her Bravo too?
1680		R. Mansell Narrative Popish Plot 99: Her Mistress had got an ill Repute, by keeping Willoughby for her Stallion.
1714		T. Lucas Lives of the Gamesters 193: He made his Address to a Marchioness in Naples, who being of an inordinate Desire in lustful Pleasures [...] kept him as her Stallion.
1755		Monitor I No.15 129: It was a complaint in our wars with Holland, that our losses were owing to the stallions and bastards of lewd women, who had interest at cour; and to other mean and dissolute persons .
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Stallion, a man kept by an old lady for secret services.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
2003		K. Cage Gayle 96/1: stallion n. heterosexual male prostitute who services females only (cf. jazz hound, lounge lizard) [Johannesburg, 1930s].

4. (UK Und.) a pimp.

c.1698

B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.

5. the penis.

1763		J. Wilkes Essay on Woman 17: When the proud Stallion knows whence every Vein / Now throbs with Lust, and now is shrunk again.
1889		C. Deveureux Venus in India in Victorian Erotic Tales (1995) 106: With a whisk of the hand she had my shit out, and with it my burning, maddened stallion.
1975		(con. 1900s) G. Swarthout Shootist 175: Where’s my gun? Will it still shoot, you old stallion?
1977		J.L. Dillard Lex. Black Eng. 33: Other Black terms for the penis include arm [...] swipe, private, Jones, pecker, stallion, Mister Tom and Johnson.

6. (US black) an unlicensed taxi.

1936

D. Burley in Chicago Defender 20 June 10: dictionary changes: ‘Stallion’ — Taxicab used by ‘cowboys’ on the boulevards.

7. (US black) a tall, good-looking woman, poss. highly sexed.

a.1954		‘Mexicana Rose’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 39: I’ve had queens, stallions, all kinds of a whore.
1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 62: When a woman is stacked up [...] then the guys call them stallions, especially if they’re tall.
1978		R.D. Pharr Giveadamn Brown (1997) 48: This Margo stallion has laid some fine trim on this nephew.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 143: Expressions like [...] stallion [...] see a woman’s desirability linked to her sexual appetites as well as her sheer physical attraction.
1999		‘Master Pimp’ Pimp’s Rap 63: The guerilla cop and his light-skin stallion made an exit after the freak show.
[2002		Dayton Dly News (OH) 25 Apr. 14/2: A drug addict named ‘Louis’ [...] spent time with a prostitute named ‘Stallion’].
2012		Pelecanos What It Was 8: Jones thought of her as a stallion, if a stallion could be female.

8. attrib. use of sense 6.

1973		E. Bunker No Beast So Fierce 48: I know you dig them stallion blondes.
1985		O. Hawkins Chili 41: Rose, [...] with her big ol’ fine stallion ass.

9. (US black/Und.) a female prostitute.

1958		W. Motley Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) 254: ‘Look at the hustlers sparkle!’ [...] The hustlers, the stallions, began to converge on them in a line of inspection.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players 41: male-female encounters In addition to hos, ladies, and bitches, women are also called working broads, professional women, hookers, stallions (if tall), and foxes.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 150: The original argot of prostitution includes some words and phrases which have gained wider currency and some which have not […] stable (group of stallions or working girls).
2001		UGK ‘Let Me See It’ 🎵 Got a young brown stallion / And she 20 years old.