schoolmistress

American  

[skool-mis-tris] / ˈskulˌmɪs trɪs /

noun

1. a woman who presides over or teaches in a school.

---

schoolmistress British  

/ ˈskuːlˌmɪstrɪs /

noun

1. a woman who teaches in or runs a school

---

Gender

See -ess.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• schoolmistressy
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of schoolmistress

First recorded in 1490–1500; school ¹ + mistress

Example Sentences

Thadden, the former schoolmistress, had vouched for a newcomer named Paul Reckzeh who attended the party.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 19, 2025

Dynamic, too, was Nicole Car as the widowed schoolmistress with hopeless belief in Grimes’s salvation.

From New York Times • Oct. 17, 2022

A ruffled oversize 19th-century schoolmistress shirt in check with gray skirt was - daringly - twinned with pink and black tiger print stripper boots and space-age eye makeup.

From Washington Times • Mar. 9, 2016

Here, the director grandly redeploys Kelli O’Hara, the Nellie Forbush of his 2008 production, as Anna Leonowens, the schoolmistress who beguiles a palace filled with the children of a king of Siam.

From Washington Post • Apr. 23, 2015

The schoolmistress lay on the kitchen table, deep in sleep, and Xan kept both palms on the sides of the young woman’s face, concentrating hard.

From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill