he would certainly have struck a stranger as a born and bred gentleman; and his wife as a thorough little slattern!
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word “Slattern,” and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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There was a strip of carpet on the floor, a picture or two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly armchair drawn up to the fireplace.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business.