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.