strip-tease colloq. (orig. U.S.).
Also strip tease, striptease.
[Back-formation from next.]
1. A kind of entertainment in which a female (occas. a male) performer undresses gradually in a tantalizingly erotic fashion before an audience, usu. to music; an instance of this.
| [1930 Variety 1 Oct. 49/4 Girls have the strip and tease down to a science.] 1936 Variety 2 Dec. 70/5 An undersea ballet, veil waving number and a mild strip tease by the entire chorus, which required little feeling, were nicely executed. 1937 Daily Tel. 29 Apr. 22/2 Can anything be said in defence of the present public interest in ‘strip-tease’ and nudist or semi-nudist displays on stage? 1943 Scrutiny XI. 286 The business-cum-Riviera set of which he is the representative in fiction (on the stage—strip-tease) were very pally with Goering and Co. 1960 News Chron. 23 Sept. 10/2 Strip-tease..can be banal. 1978 G. Greene Human Factor ii. iii. 75, I thought dinner in the Café Grill and afterwards a spot of strip-tease. |
2. In transf. and fig. use.
| 1937 Hansard Commons 20 Apr. 1623 We had a display of what I believe is now known as ‘strip-tease’, in which we were kept in tantalising expectation of what was to come. 1956 E. Linklater Dark of Summer iv. 62 The whole female art of novel-writing—is an exquisitely prolonged strip-tease. 1969 I. & P. Opie Children's Games 13 They snatch the girls' ties or hair ribbons and call it ‘Strip Tease’. 1982 J. O'Faolain Obedient Wife i. 26 ‘Do you feel I owe you a confidence?’ ‘No..if I come here to do a strip-tease, it doesn't mean you have to.’ |
3. In attrib. use. strip-tease artist, a performer of strip-tease.
| 1936 N.Y. Post 15 Sept. 13/1 Gypsy Rose Lee is at once the Bernhardt, the Duse and the Joan Crawford of Strip-Tease girls. 1939 A. Huxley After Many a Summer i. vi. 71, A strip-tease dancer in a Western mining-camp. 1944 ‘G. Orwell’ in Horizon X. 237 A strip-tease act. 1947 H. A. Smith Low Man on Totem Pole viii. 68 Miss Lee turned to a paragraph in the magazine in which Henry L. Mencken was represented as having coined a word to describe a strip-tease artist. 1953 C. Day Lewis Italian Visit i. 25 Whoever would master the truth by which your provocative, charming Strip-tease universe lives. 1958 N. Marsh Singing in Shrouds v. 101 That damn' spiritual striptease session. 1968 P. Oliver Screening Blues vi. 251 As the strip-tease artist compares with the artist's model, so the seductive effects of slow unveiling are more stimulating erotically than the starkly naked. 1979 C. MacLeod Family Vault xi. 71 Does it disgust you..that your..husband once made a fool of himself over a striptease dancer? |
Hence as v. intr., to perform a strip-tease act; strip-teaseuse, joc. alteration of stripteaser (cf. chanteuse, strippeuse, etc.); strip-teasing vbl. n. and ppl. a.; stripteuse = strip-teaseuse above.
| 1937 G. Frankau More of Us 185 Dalliest thou, stripteasing and beachcombing, On some far southern beach of Gallic joy. 1937 Variety 31 Mar. 69/1 Kraus is accused by John S. Sumner, head of the vice society, of permitting strip-teasing in his show. 1941 Sun (Baltimore) 8 Mar. 20/2 (caption) Strip-teaseuses Betty Coette..and Winnie Garrett. 1942 Time 28 Sept. 40/3 Gipsy Rose Lee, stripteuse turned woman of letters. 1951 Sun (Baltimore) 27 June 30/3 A blond stripteuse was arrested at a Silver Hill night spot. 1957 Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Oct. 611/1 Little Rose Louise was..new to burlesque, and able to gasp at strip-teasing Flossie. 1958 Listener 18 Sept. 418/2, I..drove to a night club, where a girl stripteased while lashing a whip. 1960 News Chron. 22 Sept. 3/1, I have given up strip-teasing to be with my husband. 1962 Guardian 23 Feb. 9/4 A strip-teasing woman. 1977 J. Mitford Fine Old Conflict vii. 118, I was temporarily in despair, hoping against hope that something would turn up. It did, in the shape of a former stripteaseuse whom I had met at a PW party. |