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• dame-school
  dame-school

  noun

  a school in which the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught to neighborhood children by a woman in her own home.
• dame school
  dame school

  noun

  (formerly) a small school, often in a village, usually run by an elderly woman in her own home to teach young children to read and write

dame-school

American  

[daym-skool] / ˈdeɪmˌskul /

noun

1. a school in which the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught to neighborhood children by a woman in her own home.

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dame school British  

noun

1. (formerly) a small school, often in a village, usually run by an elderly woman in her own home to teach young children to read and write

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Etymology

Origin of dame-school

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dame-school dame school

The mistress of a dame-school can hear spelling-lessons; and any hedge-schoolmaster can drill boys in the multiplication-table.

From Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects Everyman's Library by Herbert Spencer

In the porch a white-headed woman, in a gold-edged blue kerchief and poppy-red skirt, was holding a dame-school.

From Spanish Highways and Byways by Katharine Lee Bates

In very early boyhood he attended a species of dame-school, which, according to some of his biographers, he had apparently to leave because he was too clever to be tolerable.

From Robert Browning by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

The dame-school, which was about a mile from the village, was a long, low house with a thatched roof.

From Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) Classic Tales and Old-Fashioned Stories by Hamilton Wright Mabie

The gods do not keep a dame-school for us here on earth, and their ways are less obvious than that.

From Pirate Gold by Frederic Jesup Stimson

But some of today's most brilliant and brilliantined names in music went to a dame school to get their shine.

From Time Magazine Archive

The more she thought about it, the more pleasant the dame school sounded to Kit.

From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

Two small heads bent earnestly over each of the three dog-eared primers which were all the dame school could boast.

From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

She only knew that the past ten days since the dame school had begun had been the pleasantest she had known in Connecticut.

From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

Of the same character is the dim and quiet dame school which Sir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson keep.

From Heretics by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton