schoolmistress

American  

[skool-mis-tris] / ˈskulˌmɪs trɪs /

noun

1. a woman who presides over or teaches in a school.

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schoolmistress British  

/ ˈskuːlˌmɪstrɪs /

noun

1. a woman who teaches in or runs a school

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Gender

See -ess.

Other Word Forms

• schoolmistressy adjective

Etymology

Origin of schoolmistress

First recorded in 1490–1500; school ¹ + mistress

Example Sentences

“I didn’t want her to look like a grump schoolmistress,” Atwood said.

From Los Angeles Times

Dynamic, too, was Nicole Car as the widowed schoolmistress with hopeless belief in Grimes’s salvation.

From New York Times

There’s the occasional sharp moment to remind us of the character’s inner fires, but mostly she plays it cool and oddly small-scale, like an overly qualified schoolmistress who happens to find herself ruling an empire.

From New York Times

The schoolmistress lay on the kitchen table, deep in sleep, and Xan kept both palms on the sides of the young woman’s face, concentrating hard.

From Literature

In Coppola’s, each immaculate frame is suffused with female desire, pulling the audience’s sympathies from character to character, resting eventually with the quiet, lonely yearning of Kirsten Dunst’s junior schoolmistress.

From The Guardian