malefactress

[mal-uh-fak-tris]

noun

1. a woman who violates the law or does evil.

Gender Note

See -ess.

Word History and Origins

Origin of malefactress¹

First recorded in 1640–50; malefact(o)r + -ess

Example Sentences

Bloody Mary has been transfigured into a tragic and poetic malefactress: but only by the most audacious and magnificent defiance of history and possibility.

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It is, no doubt, an arduous and, some milky-veined critics would say, a doubtfully healthy or praiseworthy task to depict almost pure wickedness; it is excessively hard to render it human; and if the difficulty is not increased, it is certainly not much lessened by the artist's determination to represent the malefactress as undiscovered and even unsuspected throughout.

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Compton shook his head doubtfully, and, considering the interview at an end turned to go, when instantly the ball knocked his hat off, and nothing of the malefactress was visible but a black eye sparkling with fun and mischief, and a bit of forehead wedged against the angle of the wall.

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