[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Trollop, strumpet, crumpet, bit of fluff. piece of skirt, tart, can all be used without necessarily referring to a prostitute.
HG[/quote]
Yeah, what HG said.
It must be country related as well. Women call men tarts in Australia as something of a backhander or just for fun. Girls call each other tarts. If the reference was prostitute then we’d not be busy using the term with such ease.
[quote=“Ironman”][quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Trollop, strumpet, crumpet, bit of fluff. piece of skirt, tart, can all be used without necessarily referring to a prostitute.
HG[/quote]
Yeah, what HG said.
It must be country related as well. Women call men tarts in Australia as something of a backhander or just for fun. Girls call each other tarts. If the reference was prostitute then we’d not be busy using the term with such ease.
When I’ve heard it used it seemed more to refer to just a hot woman. Like chick/babe. Then again, I’ve mostly heard it when Hugh Grant was talking about women in movies. Certainly a sexist term, but I didn’t get the feeling that it was a pejorative reference.
The basic, original meaning is “prostitute.” But it has also been frequently used as an insult, not to prostitutes, but to women who are more active sexually than the speaker thinks appropriate. This leads to people saying ‘she looks like a tart’ to describe sexually attractive women, and therefore now it will sometimes be said about someone who is hot - but not necessarily a prostitute, not necessarily sexually promiscuous.