Procuring (prostitution)

Procuring, pimping, or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute or other sex worker in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. A procurer, often called a pimp if male, or a madam if female, (though the term "pimp" is often used for female procurers as well) or a brothel keeper, is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The procurer may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing and possibly monopolizing a location where the prostitute may solicit clients. Like prostitution, the legality of certain actions of a madam or a pimp vary from one region to the next.

Examples of procuring include:

The term procurer derives from the French procureur.

The word pimp first appeared in English in 1600, in Ben Jonson’s play Every Man out of his Humor. It is of unknown origin, though there are several hypotheses about its etymology. Pimp used as a verb, meaning to act as a pimp, first appeared around 1640 in Philip Massinger's play, The Bashful Lover. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term was commonly used to refer to informers. A pimp can also mean "a despicable person".

Rapper Nelly tried to redefine the word "pimp" by saying that it is an acronym for "positive, intellectual, motivated person". He created a college scholarship with the name "P.I.M.P. Juice Scholarship". Dawn Turner Trice of the Chicago Tribune argues that there is "something truly unsettling, to say the least, about attaching such a vile word to a scholarship" and expresses concern about the glamorization of the term.

In the first years of the 21st century, a new meaning of the word emerged in the form of a transitive verb pimp, which means "to decorate" or "to gussy up". Compare primp, especially in Scottish usage. This new definition was made popular by Pimp My Ride, an MTV television show. Although this new definition paid homage to hip-hop culture and its connection to street culture, it has now entered common, even mainstream commercial, use.

In medical contexts, the verb means "to ask (a student) a question for the purpose of testing her or his knowledge".

The word "pander", meaning to "pimp", is derived from Pandarus, a licentious figure who facilitates the affair between the protagonists in Troilus and Criseyde, a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. Pandarus appears with a similar role in Shakespeare's interpretation of the story, Troilus and Cressida.