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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

See Examples For:

dame-school dame school

Strengthened by the country air—so they said—young Jacob grew clean out of his dame-school days and into and out of Columbia College, and was sent abroad, a sturdy youth, to have a year's holiday.

From The Story of a New York House by Frost, A. B. (Arthur Burdett)

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

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 Bates, Katharine Lee

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was like nothing so much as a dame school, even to the various tutors and governesses ordered her by the Czarina.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13 by Rudd, John