Word.ws English Dictionary

painted ladies

painted ladies is the plural of painted lady.

Meaning of painted lady

Noun

painted lady (plural painted ladies)

  1. Any of certain cryptic patterned butterflies of genus Vanessa (family Nymphalidae), especially Vanessa cardui.
    Synonyms:
    cosmopolite
  2. A painted trillium (Trillium undulatum), a forest wildflower of North America.
  3. A flower of the pea family (Gompholobium scabrum), native to southwestern Australia.
  4. (dated, historical, slang) A prostitute (in reference to their use of makeup).
    • In Cheyenne in 1883, a Dr. W.A. Wyan tried in vain to save painted lady Sallie Talbot.2011, Jan MacKell, Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains, page 348
  5. (US) A Victorian house repainted with vibrant colors to accentuate the architectural design, especially in San Francisco, California.
    • An archetypal American streetscape is lined with Aesthetic movement houses: Stick Style cottages with muscular roof trusses and exposed timbering; many-colored painted ladies with gingerbread porches; […]2006, Karen Zukowski, Creating the Artful Home, Gibbs Smith, →ISBN, page 80
  6. A sea snail (Phasianella australis).

Questions about painted ladies

What is painted ladies the plural of?
Painted ladies is the plural of painted lady.

Words near painted ladies in the dictionary

  1. painted hound
  2. painted hunting dog
  3. painted hunting dogs
  4. painted Jezebel
  5. painted Jezebels
  6. painted ladies
  7. painted lady
  8. painted mantis shrimp
  9. painted mantis shrimps
  10. painted oneself into a corner
  11. painted out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: painted ladies (page history and authors); painted lady (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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