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View synonyms for scarlet woman
scarlet woman
[ skahr-lit woom-uhn ]
noun
- a sexually promiscuous woman, especially a prostitute or a woman who commits adultery.
- a symbol of pagan Rome or, derogatorily, of the church of Rome.
scarlet woman
noun
- New Testament a sinful woman described in Revelation 17, interpreted as a figure either of pagan Rome or of the Roman Catholic Church regarded as typifying vice overlaid with gaudy pageantry
- any sexually promiscuous woman, esp a prostitute
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Word History and Origins
Origin of scarlet woman1
First recorded in 1810–20; from the Bible, in which an enemy of God personified as “the whore of Babylon” is described as dressed in scarlet and purple
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Idioms and Phrases
A prostitute, an immoral woman, as in Malicious gossip had it that she was a scarlet woman, which was quite untrue . This expression first appeared in Revelation 17:5, describing Saint John's vision of a woman in scarlet clothes with an inscription on her forehead, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” Some interpreters believe she stood for Rome, drunk with the blood of saints, but by about 1700 the term was being used more generally for a woman with loose morals.Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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