What does "slut-shaming" mean?

The act of making a person (especially a woman) feel guilty or inferior for sexual activity, desires, expression, or circumstances that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations or religious or cultural standards.

Slut-shaming

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The act of making a person (especially a woman) feel guilty or inferior for sexual activity, desires, expression, or circumstances that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations or religious or cultural standards. uncountable
"But now the hit musical Grease has become the latest target of ‘woke’ critics who have condemned it for racism, sexism, homophobia and ‘slut-shaming’."

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of slut-shame form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"But now the hit musical Grease has become the latest target of ‘woke’ critics who have condemned it for racism, sexism, homophobia and ‘slut-shaming’."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.