Floozies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term used to describe women who are considered promiscuous or lacking in moral integrity
2. This word can also refer informally to ladies who engage in frivolous or superficial behavior
3. It may be used to characterize individuals, often women, who prioritize appearance or shallow pursuits over serious matters

Etymology: "Floozies" is the plural of "floozie," and it is a word with a noisy, uncertain past. The most solid lead is that it is a corruption of "flossy," an adjective meaning showy or ostentatious, which in turn points back to "floss" in the sense of something fine, glossy, or flashy. Over time the flashy quality of the adjective seems to have attached itself to the people who displayed it, so a flossy person became a floozie. The shift from an adjective describing things to a noun describing people is the key move here. A word praising a surface sheen ended up naming those whose main investment was in that sheen. The modern sense, which casts the term at women thought to prioritize appearance or frivolous pursuits, grew out of that earlier idea of showiness rather than out of anything about serious character.