English edit

Noun edit

chamber-work (uncountable)

  1. (euphemistic, obsolete) Sex; fornication.
    • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: [], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:
      , vol.I, New York, 2001, p.235:
      Jacchinus [] instanceth in a patient of his, that married a young wife in a hot summer, “and so dried himself with chamber-work, that he became in short space, from melancholy, mad”: he cured him by moistening remedies.
  2. The work of a chambermaid.