noun
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the wife or widow of a peer
-
a woman holding the rank of a peer in her own right
Gender
See -ess.
Etymology
Origin of peeress
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.
However, on her appointment as minister for Europe, she became a peeress in her own right.
From BBC • Dec. 3, 2023
Which explains how the Mayfair peeress who asked me for cocktails one day has a villa packed with Vieux Paris silver-plate and Louis XVI armchairs covered in needlepoint scenes from La Fontaine’s “Fables.”
From New York Times • May 20, 2011
Last week this indomitable peeress, who heads today the British Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defense, announced at Preston in Lancashire an idea as practical as the dictaphone.
From Time Magazine Archive
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If Lady Stanwick had been a peeress in her own right, which is possible, she could not have had a brother.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Persons not uneducated—very highly dressed Fine folks as peer and peeress, go and fee a Yankee seeress, To evoke their dead relations' Spirits from their rest.
From Punch - Volume 25 (Jul-Dec 1853) by Various
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.