Definition of "slattern" [slat•tern]

• An untidy, dirty woman. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I fancy my predecessor must have been a "slattern," for everything was thick with dust."
• "While "slattern" and "French letter" are dated, they made me think of those cute nicknames parents give the vagina, labia, penis, and scrotum when talking to their kids."
• "When we first see her in Minneapolis, a slattern in a junk-strewn apartment, she's living on scraps of loveless sex, drinking too much and picking up snatches of kids' conversations here and there, then dropping them into her chronicles of Kendall Strickland, the teenage heroine of a series called Waverly Prep that is, in fact, headed for the dustbin of subliterary history."