scarlet letter

English

Noun

scarlet letter (plural scarlet letters)

1. (historical) The letter "A" in scarlet cloth required to be worn by those convicted of adultery in 17th-century Puritan New England.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:

     The Scarlet Letter [title]

   • 2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, Penguin, published 2013, page 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.

2. (figurative, by extension) A highly visible stigma.
   • 2018, Dianna E. Anderson, Problematic: How Toxic Callout Culture Is Destroying Feminism:

     The scarlet letters that current discourse has slapped upon people deemed “problematic,” deemed “unreachable” for feminism, have created consternation […]