Forms: 6 banio, 7 bagno, bagneo, bannia, -ier, -iard, bagnard, 7–9 bagnio. [a. It. bagno:—L. balneum bath. Cf. BALNEO.]
† 1. A bath, a bathing-house; esp. one with hot baths, vapor-baths, and appliances for sweating, cupping, and other operations. (No longer applied to any such place in Britain, the nearest approach to which is the modern Turkish Bath; but applied as an alien word to the baths of Italian or Turkish cities.)
1615. G. Sandys, Travels, 12. Upon the Castle Hill there is a Bannia … containing seueral roomes one hoter than another.
1624. Massinger, Renegado, I. ii. At the public bagnios or the mosques.
1653. Greaves, Seraglio, 7. Dining rooms, Bagno’s [marginal note. Bathes or hot-houses; it must be pronounced Banios].
1682. Lond. Gaz., No. 1686/4. The Royal Bagnio is now in very good Order.
1683. Tryon, Way to Health, 324. Their Chambers are in the next degree to Bagneo’s or Hot-Houses.
1695. Congreve, Love for Love, I. xiv. I have a Beau in a Bagnio, Cupping for a Complexion, and Sweating for a Shape.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe (1858), 601. Just as they heat the bagnios in England.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1862), I. VI. v. 480. The beavers make two apertures … one is a passage to their bagnio.
1820. Mair, Tyro’s Dict., 376. Sudatorium, a bagnio or hot house, to sweat in.
2. An oriental prison, a place of detention for slaves, a penal establishment.
(So in It. and Sp., and F. bagne. The origin of this use of the word is doubtful: see conjectures in Chambers, Cycl., 1751, and Littré.)
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 186. The king sent … to the Banio: (this Banio is the prison wheras all the captiues lay at night).
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), I. 42. A slave in the bannier at Algier.
1660–1. Pepys, Diary, 8 Feb. Stories of Algiers and the … slaves there … How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard.
1687. Rycaut, Hist. Turks, II. App. 5. A prison and Banniard of Slaves.
1728. Morgan, Algiers, II. iv. 268. He sent him to his Bagnio, among the rest of his Slaves.
1847. Disraeli, Tancred, VI. v. To be sent to the bagnio or the galleys.
3. A brothel, a house of prostitution. (Cf. similar application of STEW.)
1624. Massinger, Parl. Love, II. ii. To be sold to a brothel Or a common bagnio.
1747. Hoadley, Susp. Husb., II. iv. (1756), 27. Carry her to a Bagnio, and there you may lodge with her.
1851. Thackeray, Eng. Hum., v. (1858), 243. How the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio.
1862. Wright, Dom. Mann., 491. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel.
† 4. = BATH in Chemistry. Also attrib.
1696. E. Smith, in Phil. Trans., XIX. 229. Two hundred Drams Calcined at a Bagnio Fire.
