Prostitutes were called meretrīx, "earner", and lupa, "she-wolf"; a brothel was a lupānar; these words referred to the mercantile and perceived predatory activities of prostitutes.
The important and productive words for a prostitute, *puta or *putāna, are not attested in Classical Latin, despite their many Romance derivatives: French putain and pute, Italian puttana, Spanish, Filipino, Catalan, Portuguese and Galician puta.