priestess
Americannoun
Gender
See -ess.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of priestess
Explanation
A priestess is a female religious figure. In ancient Greece, a priestess often dressed in the style of a goddess, wearing white robes and carrying a long staff. The word priestess is a feminine version of priest, which stems from the Old English prēost and its Greek root, presbyteros, "an elder." While hundreds of years ago a priestess was simply a female priest, today's Christians use priest whether they're talking about a man or a woman. The word priestess is used for ancient religions and occasionally pagan or Wiccan religious leaders.
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:
He was working in the grove, on the Iledi Ontooto shrine roof, when Susanne Wenger, the Austrian-Nigerian artist and Yoruba priestess, said to him: "It is wood carving you'll be doing."
From BBC ● Jan. 19, 2026
Warren Buffett once called him a Cassandra—the mythological Trojan priestess whose grim prophecies were ignored.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
Researching Annie, I had to look back at where I’m from, because she’s a hoodoo priestess and hoodoo is a derivative of Ifa, and Ifa is the traditional Yoruba religion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2025
The ghost tours in New Orleans are borderline legendary, with popular offerings focusing on the supernatural, New Orleans’ “Casket Girls,” and on the origins of Marie Laveau’s rise to notoriety as a voodoo priestess.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 27, 2025
He must go to the Taurian country, the Delphic priestess said, and bring away the sacred image of Artemis from her temple.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
A magazine account admiringly described Osterberg's students, typically in their late teens, as "teachers in embryo... destined high priestesses of a new cult".
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
Millennial feminism, Helen Lewis writes in the Atlantic, eventually revealed “the gap between what its high priestesses demanded and what they were able to endure themselves.”
From Slate ● Mar. 31, 2026
Mosaku: I spoke to hoodoo priestesses and that was really my main research, was kind of the faith, because that is who she is.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2025
But a rainy weather forecast means the sun's rays will not be able to light the parabolic mirror used by actresses in the garb of ancient priestesses.
From Barron's ● Nov. 25, 2025
These marble women are called caryatids, which orginally referred to the priestesses of Artemis at Caryae.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
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.
