scarlet letter

English

Noun

scarlet letter (plural scarlet letters)

  1. (historical) A letter A in scarlet cloth required to be worn by those convicted of adultery in 17th-century Puritan New England.
    • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, (title):
      The Scarlet Letter.
    • 2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, Penguin 2013, p. 44:
      In the early seventeenth century, all the colonies of New England enacted harsh laws against unchastity: banishment, imprisonment, severe public flogging, the wearing of scarlet letters and other shaming garments for the rest of one's life.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.