stewardess
Americannoun
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stewardesses
plural
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a woman flight attendant.
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a woman who attends to the comfort of passengers on a ship, train, or bus.
noun
Gender
See -ess.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of stewardess
1625–35 for earlier sense “female steward”; 1930–35 stewardess for def. 1; steward + -ess
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On an airplane, recently, she noticed that when the stewardess came around offering coffee and tea, a surprising number of adults opted for hot chocolate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 4, 2025
A fur coat owned by a first-class stewardess sold by them for £150,000 in 2017.
From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2023
David Zucker: My favorite has always been when the stewardess says, "I've never been so scared, and besides, I am 26 and I'm not married."
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2023
After Kathleen and a hippie who’s just joined a commune comes Nadine, an Air France stewardess from Nantes.
From New York Times ● Apr. 9, 2023
“Live in California and be a stewardess, that was my dream.”
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
“Catch Me If You Can” leans hard into ’60s chic, with an ensemble of Pan Am airline stewardesses and a variety-show orchestra on stage.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2019
"But it was feared that if one of the stewardesses didn't stay aboard, he may not let the passengers off in Denver."
From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2019
The passengers and crew members inside the cabin described a chaotic scene in which the meals the attendants were serving were thrown about and the stewardesses themselves were tossed into the air.
From Slate ● May 15, 2018
Some know her as Rabbi Raquel, the much-suffering moral compass of “Transparent” on Amazon; others as one of the campy stewardesses of the Broadway revival of “Boeing-Boeing.”
From New York Times ● Jul. 29, 2016
Ma's eyes close as the stewardesses busy themselves with preflight chores.
From "You Bring the Distant Near" by Mitali Perkins
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
