Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also puttana) a prostitute; a highly promiscuous woman.

1936		E. Hemingway letter 5 Apr. in Baker Sel. Letters (1981) 441: You can use whore for puta or puta for whore.
[1947		(con. 1944) J.H. Burns Gallery (1948) 266: There were the girls of Via Roma, whom the Napolitans [...] called puttane].
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 265: Puta! [...] Estás una puta, una puta!
1953		W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 83: That f---- zombie! He ought to be in a house for putas, not in a f---- jail. [Ibid.] 111: Let me take a couple more bucks off this zombie. I’m as hot as puta.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 5: ‘Man, you got that stuff?’ ‘Yeah. Jesus, I’m burning up like with a puta’s fever.’.
1976		E. Thompson Caldo Largo (1980) 70: Between the gross putas [...] and the sad, little, still frightened Indians, every size, shape, and denomination of whore offered herself.
1989		(con. 1982–6) T. Williams Cocaine Kids (1990) 113: Then I saw that puta [whore] Sonia that Splib had been fucking looking out the window.
1997		E. Little Another Day in Paradise 214: You gonna fuck that puta?
2000		F.X. Toole Rope Burns 29: ‘You don’t speak no Spanish, right?’ [...] ‘About like the rest of the California gringos,’ I said. ‘Cerveza, and puta, and cuánto — beer, and whore, and how much.’.
2012		J. Díaz This Is How You Lose Her 102: Don’t believe anything that puta tells you.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘My cousins call me a puta for going with Terry’.
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 16: ‘You want the whole neighborhood to think you’re a little puttana?’.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 261: ‘[S]he said the woman we popped at Bev’s is a puta, and she’s got no truck with her’.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 230: The Potteries trollops and Black Country putas heard stories of their ill-fated predecessors.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

2003		A.N. LeBlanc Random Family 20: Jessica called her club-style dressing puta.
2015		J. Stahl OG Dad 61: Her puta fiance left all her furniture out in the rain.

3. a general term of abuse.

1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 18: ‘We should’ve won that game.’ ‘Yeah, [...] everybody played like an old puta.’.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 108: ‘Puta!’ Raquel screeched.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 83: Rings [...] had the puta down chopping her face with her fists.
2003		Eble Campus Sl. Nov. 6: puta – female. Derogatory.
2017		S.M. Jones August Snow [ebook] ‘Listening to her bitch, moan, piss and groan [...] All for six-fifty cash a week—and the puta hated parting with that’.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 34: ‘Fucking bitch. Puta’.