tart

tart¹ sour, sharp

Etymology

The adjective meaning sour is inherited from Middle English tart, also tarte and terte,^[5] inherited from Old English teart (“sharp, rough, severe”).^{[5][6][1][2][7]} Etymonline calls this descent probable, since the record has a gap between Old and Middle English.^[3] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster relate the Old English word to trot (“spite, defiance”), Middle High German traz (“spite, defiance”) (modern Trotz) and Middle Dutch torten (“to challenge, defy”) (modern tarten),^[2][1] and Holthausen gives the same comparisons.^[8] Its further origin is obscure:^[6] it has been referred, with some doubt, to the verb teran, the source of tear,^{[6][2][9][10]} and Etymonline, after Watkins, traces it through Proto-Germanic *ter-t- to Proto-Indo-European *der- (“to split, flay, peel”).^[3][11] Köbler reconstructs Proto-Germanic *tartaz (“rough”), from the same root.^[12] Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English call its origin unknown.^[7][13][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English teart was used only of punishment, pain or suffering: sharp, severe, grievous.^[6][15] Ælfric's Homilies speak of a swíðe teart wíte, a very severe torment.^[15][2] Toller's Supplement adds a glossed use for sharp, piercing fragments.^[15]

Semantic evolution

The OED calls the sense history "deficient": in Middle English the word is known from little more than one passage of Chaucer, who in the General Prologue (c. 1387–95) describes a spice powder as tart, sharp to the taste.^[6][16][17] After 1500 that sense, sharp, pungent or sour in taste, became common, and the old sense "painful, severe" reappeared in the late 16th century before dying out in the early 17th.^[6][13] In the 16th century the word was also used of a keen edge or weapon, and since about 1600 of sharp, biting or caustic words,^[6][3] the sense Johnson (1755) gave as "sharp; keen; severe", after "sour; acid".^[18] The OED admits that the order of these senses can only be provisional.^[6] In the dialects of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset the form teart kept the old senses: a teart wound was a painful one, and teart weather was keen and piercing.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – Old English teart, sharp, severe, of punishment or pain.^[2][6]
• c. 1387–95 – sharp to the taste, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.^[6][2]
• 1601 – figuratively, of words or a speaker: sharp, biting, caustic.^[6]
• 1616 – the verb tart, to make tart or sour.^[6][2]
• 1616 – last record of the old sense "painful, severe".^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having a sharp, sour or acid taste, often pleasantly so: The unripe gooseberries were too tart to eat raw.^[20][1][11]
2. Of words or tone: sharp, cutting or caustic: She gave a tart answer and turned away.^[20][1][11]
3. Having a sharp or slightly acrid smell.^[1]
4. (obsolete, Old English–1616) Of pain or punishment: severe, grievous.^[6][13]

Word family

• tartly
• tartness
• tartish
• tartishly
• overtart

tart² pastry; loose woman

Etymology tree of tart²

inherited borrowed derived

Latin torqueo

English torque

Latin tortus

Latin torta

Italian torta

English tart

From the same root · tart²

Latin contorqueo ← torqueo

Latin detorqueo ← torqueo

Latin distorqueo ← torqueo

Latin intorqueo ← torqueo

Latin obtorqueo ← torqueo

Latin retorqueo ← torqueo

Latin torculus ← torqueo

Latin tormentum ← torqueo

Latin tortor ← torqueo

Latin tortura ← torqueo

Etymology

The pastry is inherited from Middle English tarte,^[1][2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman tarte, as in Old French tarte, also tartre, a dish with a crust of baked pastry and a sweet or savoury filling, recorded in French from the 13th century.^[6][3][21] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the mid-13th century.^[21] Its origin is uncertain.^{[6][13][20][14]} Many dictionaries take it as probably a variant of torte (modern tourte),^{[6][2][11][9]} from Late Latin torta (“round loaf of bread”),^[2][3][11] a suggestion that Etymonline credits to Diez;^[3] the Latin may come from the past participle of torqueō (“to twist”), though Weekley doubted both links.^[3][10] The OED suggests that the French forms with a may come from association with Medieval Latin tartarum (“tartar”), the crust of a tart being likened to the crust inside a wine cask.^[6] tarta is recorded from 1103,^[6][10] and Barnhart thinks it may have influenced the French form, and that in English the sour adjective tart may have influenced the noun, since tarts were often filled with sour fruit.^[2] The slang sense "woman" is usually taken as a shortening of sweetheart,^{[13][14][22][20]} but Partridge and others trace it to jam tart, a sweet "dish", which was itself early 19th-century British slang for an attractive woman;^[9][3] the OED allows both, and also an allusion to the display of filling in an open tart.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A baked dish of meat, fish, fruit or the like enclosed in or covered with pastry, a pie: 1381, in the cookery book Diuersa Servicia.^[6][2] In medieval times a tart was usually savoury.^[22][14]

Semantic evolution

In later use a tart became chiefly an open pastry case with a sweet filling such as fruit or jam, without a top crust.^[6][3][13] In the 19th century the word became slang for a girl or woman, at first in an affectionate or approving sense: the OED's earliest example is from 1838, in an Arkansas newspaper,^[6] and Hotten's slang dictionary of 1864 explained it as a word of the London lower orders for a young woman dressed "in her best", "made pretty all over, like the jam tarts in the swell bakers' shops".^[23][3] By the end of the century it was used disparagingly: of a promiscuous woman from 1887 and of a prostitute from 1888.^[6][2][22] In Australia and New Zealand the neutral sense, one's wife or girlfriend, survived,^[23][13] and in English regional use it is now mainly a Liverpool word.^[6] British public-school slang applied tart to a boy who was the favourite of an older boy from 1935,^[6][3] and since 1979 it has also been used of anyone ready to compromise themselves for gain.^[6] From the slang noun came the verb tart up, to dress or decorate in a showy or gaudy way (1930, of things; 1938, of people).^[6][3][2]

Timeline

• 1381 – a pie of meat, fish or fruit in pastry.^[6]
• 1838 – a young woman, a girl (colloquial).^[6]
• 1864 – Hotten records it as an approving term for a young woman.^[23][3]
• 1887 – a sexually promiscuous woman (derogatory).^[6][2]
• 1888 – a prostitute.^[6]
• 1898 – one's wife or girlfriend.^[6]
• 1930 – tart up, to make something showy or gaudy.^[6]
• 1938 – tart up, to dress oneself up showily.^[6][3][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. An open pastry case with a sweet or savoury filling, such as fruit, jam or custard: a rhubarb tart.^[20][1][24]
2. (informal, derogatory) A promiscuous woman, or a woman who dresses or behaves provocatively.^[6][24][1]
3. (slang) A prostitute.^[6][1][24]
4. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) A girl or woman; one's wife or girlfriend.^[13][23]
5. (British slang) A person willing to give up principles for gain or attention.^[6]

Verb

1. tart up (chiefly British, informal): to decorate or dress something or someone in a showy or gaudy way: They tarted up the old pub with brass and neon.^[24][13][6]

Word family

• tartlet
• tarty
• Banbury tart