demimonde

1. (chiefly historical (19th-century France)) A class of women maintained by wealthy protectors; female courtesans or prostitutes as a group.Examples: "A most remarkable instance of this was afforded in the play of Camille by the performance of the supper-scene. The stage in this scene is supposed to represent a supper-room, enlivened by the presence of a party of young Parisians, more gay, indeed, than respectable, but still Parisians, and Parisians of the demimonde, which, of the two halves that go to make up the whole of the monde, preserves the hemisphere of manners while it throws away the hemisphere of decorum."; "To give a good and solid education to the gentle sex would tend to double the army of progress, to draw closer the domestic relations, and to annihilate that extra-conjugal society (the demi[-]monde of [Alexandre] Dumas the younger) which is now so very prosperous."; "Paris society borrows fashions from the demi-monde, and the demi-monde borrows manners from the extravagant princesses, countesses, and viscountesses. All Parie has been stirred with the Sardanapalian entertainment, which a leader of the demi-monde gave on the eve of Lent to the best male society in the Empire. The ladies were all unquestionably from young [Alexandre] Dumas' panier à quinze sous; but their manners and their toilettes were, we are told, all that could be desired."

2. (by extension) A group having little respect or reputation.Examples: "the literary demimonde"; "It's fascinating to hear, for example, how an addict and charming scoundrel named Herbert Huncke — the man who became a key emissary from the drug demimonde for Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac — had himself been drawn to heroin by tales of Shanghai opium dens, “posh layouts with cushions on the floor and naked or half-naked men and women laying about,” as he tells Torgoff."; "In the midst of these discussions over foreign realisms, a group of novels appeared that pointed up the contradictions that beset the regime's projects for a national literature and a fascist style of modernity. Written by intellectuals in their twenties, these novels sparked much debate for their frank depictions of bourgeois moral corruption. […] In fact, the young protagonists of these works hardly fit the description of the regime's "new men," and the cosmopolitan demimondes they frequent had been targeted by fascist zealots for rehabilitation."broadly

3. (by extension) A member of such a class or group of persons.Examples: "Those who seek pleasure in a round of dances and fashionable frolic, where the german and the horse-race, the card-table and the drive, are the order of the day, will gather to the sea side and the spa; they will seek Newport, the maelstrom of money; or Long Branch with its broiling sun and its retinue of demimondes and stuck-up-ities; […]"; "I was called to see B. J., a demimonde and opium habitue, and found her suffering intensely with pain over the right upper chest, neck and arm, and numbness in the right little finger and one-half of the ring finger. […] Diagnosis—brachialgia following traumatism."; "On the evening of 4 August 1914 London's Café Royal was alive with its usual array of demimondes, dandies, aristocrats, émigrés, and self-styled bohemians."broadly