pander

   This word should properly be ‘Pandar’, since it derives from the name ‘Pandarus’. This was the name given by Boccaccio and Chaucer to the man who acted as gobetween for Troilus and Criseyde, though by the time Shakespeare came to write his version of the story, as Troilus and Cressida, a pander already had the meaning of male procurer, or pimp.

   Shakespeare himself did not express it in those words. His Pandarus says to the young lovers: ‘If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be call’d to the world’s end after my name - call them all Pandars.’ Elsewhere in his plays he makes it clear that to call someone a pander is insulting. In King Lear (2:ii) ‘pander’ is equated with beggar and coward as Kent abuses Oswald. Cymberline (3:v) has ‘you precious pander, villain!’

   The word is almost never used in modern English as a noun or vocative, though we talk freely about pandering to someone’s wishes, which derives from the same source. The modern insult would be ‘you pimp’.