Tuesday 7 July 2009

tart tart tart

Tart:

TART * The sweet: as in the dessert tart, coming to English in the 1200s from French. A bit of pastry with some fruit in. Maybe a spot of cream in there and a glaze on top.

TART * The tart: as in the adjective tart, meaning “sharp, piquant,” originating from an Old English word teart, with intense meanings of pain and suffering.

TART * The sweet and tart: as in the pejorative tart applied to prostitutes, promiscuous women and occasionally men. This version of the word was sweet in that it was used in a positive sense when it appeared around the mid 1800s; it took pejorative connotations not long after. It's thought that the first use of tart in this sense was as a shortening of sweetheart, or jam-tart, cockney rhyming slang for sweetheart.

1 comment:

  1. Very happy to see such beautiful color and patterns and words here again!

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