headmistress
Americannoun
-
headmistresses
plural
noun
Gender
See -ess.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of headmistress
Explanation
A headmistress is the female principal of a school, particularly a private school. You might need to ask the headmistress of your high school for a college recommendation. Private schools and prep schools often call the person in charge a headmaste if he's a man and a headmistress if she's a woman. It's more common to have a principal in the United States, especially in public schools. The word headmistress is commonly thought of as British, but it's increasingly likely that a British student will use the term head teacher instead, since it can refer to either a man or a woman.
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:
These girls make up what the school’s fusty headmistress, Miss Mackay, derisively labels “the Brodie set.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
Neither the stage production nor the musical can do much with the melodramatic Madame Morrible, the headmistress at Shiz who becomes a key player in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s fascist machinations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2024
Yeoh plays the headmistress at their school, and, the studio recently announced, Peter Dinklage will be Dr. Dillamond, a history professor and goat.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 10, 2024
It's been six years since "Girls" concluded, and since then Kirke has played a variety of acclaimed roles, including a strict headmistress on "Sex Education" and a charismatic author on "Conversations with Friends."
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2023
But she knew her former headmistress well; for whatever reason, this business about Penelope’s hair seemed to be a matter of real importance to Miss Mortimer, and there would be no argument.
From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood
For one thing, amapiano - a type of house music that emerged from South Africa's townships in the early 2010s - was a genre for young people, not for 65-year-old school headmistresses.
From BBC ● Dec. 11, 2020
Across Australia politicians, police, columnists, headmistresses, radio loudmouths, preachers and priests had united in declaring Roth’s 1969 scatological masterpiece Portnoy’s Complaint a danger to the morals of the nation.
From The Guardian ● May 26, 2018
I've been expelled from three and the headmistresses still swoon when they hear my name breathed.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 6, 2010
A paradoxical reason for sending children to private prep schools was offered last week to a Manhattan conference of headmasters and headmistresses.
From Time Magazine Archive
The walls were covered with portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses, all of whom were snoozing gently in their frames.
From "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" by J. K. Rowling
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.
