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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  

[deym-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

She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not hear of a public school.

From Pirate Gold by Stimson, Frederic Jesup

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 Spencer, Herbert

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 Stimson, Frederic Jesup

The mistress of the dame-school at Clermont recognised in the Abbé's protégé her former pupil.

From Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton by Anonymous

Geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large style.

From Essays — Second Series by Emerson, Ralph Waldo