scarlet

A woman who is ostracized because of promiscuous behavior. Once everyone learned of her affair, she moved away from the city, rather than staying and being labeled a scarlet woman.

A dark reddish dye that is used as a biological stain. You can see that the fat in that tissue sample has been stained scarlet red.

a woman who people think is morally bad because she has sex with a lot of men She was labelled a scarlet woman and excluded from polite society.

A prostitute, an immoral woman, as in Malicious gossip had it that she was a scarlet woman, which was quite untrue. This expression first appeared in Revelation 17:5, describing Saint John's vision of a woman in scarlet clothes with an inscription on her forehead, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." Some interpreters believe she stood for Rome, drunk with the blood of saints, but by about 1700 the term was being used more generally for a woman with loose morals.