Like most “new” games, the New Game of Human Life was an old game tarted up. It adopted its board and rules from a game called the Royal Game of Goose, which was invented in Florence in the 16th century, and was itself descended from a class of board games that R.C. Bell calls “spiral race games.”
I guess I understand the meaning of the expression, but I wonder why the author (JILL LEPORE) chose to use it here. Sort of like a street walker dressing up for work—somewhat garishly?
BTW the piece, The MEANING OF LIFE, What Milton Bradley Started, is interesting reading and appears in the 5/21/07 issue of The New Yorker.
Yup. It means that you just changed the appearance to make it more attractive, but did not in fact change the substance. It also implies that you did so rather cheaply, and perhaps in a tawdry fashion.
It’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig: the pig may be a perfectly good pig, but putting lipstick on it isn’t fooling anyone, and the effect isn’t particularly complimentary to neither the pig nor the lipstick.
She intends to imply snidely that all they did was take an old board game and dress it up and re-merchandise it, but if she only says “they dressed it up”, it doesn’t convey “snide”. “Tarted it up” conveys “snide” perfectly.
And yes, a “tart” is an old-fashioned term for “slutty/promiscuous girl” (not necessarily a prostitute, who takes money for it, though), and “tarted up” has always meant a sneering way to say “dressed up”.
