Primary
''slattern'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260715204347-00-⌔
slattern - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
slattern (plural slatterns)
- (derogatory) A slut, a sexually promiscuous woman.
- ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: promiscuous woman
- (dated) One who is uncareful or unconcerned about appearance or surroundings, usually said of a dirty and untidy woman.
- ✤ Synonym: (archaic) moggy
- ✤ 3. Cookery is familiar to her, with the price and quality of provisions; and she is a ready accountant. Her chief view, however, is to serve her mother and lighten her cares. She holds cleanliness and neetness to be indispensable in a woman; and that a slattern is disgusting, especially if beautiful.1
- ✤ A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow-commoner; but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he before had been a slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly splendid in appearance.2
- ✤ […] How many times I have heard a woman called a slattern, because she could not keep a house in order, when had she been allowed to write out her sublime thoughts, which were all in another direction, she would have astonished the world with her genius.3
- ✤ A MANDA: I’ve been brought up to believe that it’s beyond the pale, for a man to strike a woman.
E LYOT: A very poor tradition. Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.
A MANDA: You’re an unmitigated cad, and a bully.
E LYOT: And you’re an ill-mannered, bad tempered slattern.
A MANDA (loudly): Slattern indeed.
E LYOT: Yes, slattern, slattern, slattern, and fishwife.
V ICTOR: Keep your mouth shut, you swine.4Etymology
Dating from the 17th century; related to slattering (“slovenly”), from the dialectal verb slatter (“to slop, to spill”).5
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-07-15.
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Link to original Footnotes
1809, Noah Webster, Esq., An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking: Calculated to Improve the Minds and Refine the Taste of Youth, to Which are Prefixed Rules in Elocution and Directions for Expressing the Principal Passions of the Mind, page 24: ↩
1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC: ↩
1868 September 17, Lizzie Leavenworth, Slattern Genius; quoted in 2001 by Anne Russo and Cherise Kramarae in The Radical Women’s Press of the 1850s, page 202: ↩
1933, Noel Coward, Private Lives: an Intimate Comedy in Three Acts, act 3: ↩
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary [Eleventh Edition] ↩
“slattern”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present. ↩
Secondary
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