noun
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a loud, violent, and ill-tempered woman; scold; shrew
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archaic a strong, brave, or warlike woman; amazon
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of virago
before 1000; Middle English, Old English < Latin virāgō, equivalent to vir man + -āgō suffix expressing association of some kind, here resemblance
Explanation
A virago is a loud, bossy woman, like your next door neighbor who is always yelling at kids to get off her lawn. You can use the noun virago when you're describing a particularly mean and scolding woman. It's not a compliment to call someone a virago, although its origins are much nobler than the shrewish, screechy character it implies today. Originally, a virago was a brave or heroic woman. The root of virago is the Latin word for "man," vir. In other words, a virago used to mean a woman who seemed manly or virile.
Vocabulary lists containing virago
Twelfth Night
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"Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving
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"American History" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
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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:
Ms. Boycott chose the name — a virago is defined both as a strong, heroic woman and as a harpy — and it fit the mission, and perhaps also Ms. Callil’s persona.
From New York Times ● Oct. 29, 2022
Yet, tellingly, this virago is also the creation of a male writer-director.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2018
“HLN’s virago of vengeance,” the New York Times dubbed her in 2011.
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2016
“Jackson is an awesome virago who delivers her lines like bayonet thrusts,” Time magazine drama critic T.E.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2016
Jezebel, jez′e-bel, n. a bold and vicious woman, a virago.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 2 of 4: E-M) by Various
Wodehouse still lives in the same cloud-cuckoo land of titled old blighters, muscular viragoes and fluffy-minded bachelors that he first celebrated 67 books ago.
From Time Magazine Archive
Hagen can be one of the stage's great ripsnorting viragoes, as she demonstrated last year off-Broadway in the title role of Shaw's Mrs.Warren's Profession.
From Time Magazine Archive
Behind them came a woman escorted by two coarse, red-faced viragoes.
From The Tremendous Event by Maurice Leblanc
He made a sign to the two viragoes to lead their prisoner away.
From The Tremendous Event by Maurice Leblanc
I shouldn't make it one of your hoity-toity vixenish viragoes.
From The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan by Sir W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert
When transgender entered the popular lexicon through the efforts of activists and aid organizations in the mid-1990s, it replaced transsexual, which had replaced transvestite, which was what they called cross-dressers and before that viragos.
From Slate ● May 14, 2018
Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two viragos about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub.
From Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving
"If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old viragos in Exeter," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
From He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin.
From Kimono by John Paris
Half-a-dozen Pennsylvanian viragos surrounded and assailed me with their united tongues to a deafening degree.
From Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 by Arthur James Lyon Fremantle
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