noun
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a loud, violent, and ill-tempered woman; scold; shrew
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archaic a strong, brave, or warlike woman; amazon
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of virago
before 1000; Middle English, Old English < Latin virāgō, equivalent to vir man + -āgō suffix expressing association of some kind, here resemblance
Explanation
A virago is a loud, bossy woman, like your next door neighbor who is always yelling at kids to get off her lawn. You can use the noun virago when you're describing a particularly mean and scolding woman. It's not a compliment to call someone a virago, although its origins are much nobler than the shrewish, screechy character it implies today. Originally, a virago was a brave or heroic woman. The root of virago is the Latin word for "man," vir. In other words, a virago used to mean a woman who seemed manly or virile.
Vocabulary lists containing virago
Twelfth Night
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"Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving
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"American History" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
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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:
Ms. Boycott chose the name — a virago is defined both as a strong, heroic woman and as a harpy — and it fit the mission, and perhaps also Ms. Callil’s persona.
From New York Times ● Oct. 29, 2022
“HLN’s virago of vengeance,” the New York Times dubbed her in 2011.
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2016
“Jackson is an awesome virago who delivers her lines like bayonet thrusts,” Time magazine drama critic T.E.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2016
It was Taylor's ability to get into the skin of the character, more than the padding and a tousled salt-and-pepper wig, which transformed the legendary beauty into a blowsy virago.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 23, 2011
In Breconshire, the virago was punished through the ceffyl pren merely by the moral influence of parading it before her cottage.
From British Goblins Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes
Hagen can be one of the stage's great ripsnorting viragoes, as she demonstrated last year off-Broadway in the title role of Shaw's Mrs.Warren's Profession.
From Time Magazine Archive
Wodehouse still lives in the same cloud-cuckoo land of titled old blighters, muscular viragoes and fluffy-minded bachelors that he first celebrated 67 books ago.
From Time Magazine Archive
Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two viragoes about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub.
From Oliver Goldsmith A Biography by Washington Irving
Several experiences with the tongue-lashings of176 Southern viragoes had made Si and Shorty less impressed by them than they had been earlier in their service.
From Si Klegg, Book 3 (of 6) Si And Shorty Meet Mr. Rosenbaum, The Spy, Who Relates His Adventures by John McElroy
It was only by mob misunderstanding that the suffragettes were conceived as viragoes, just as it was only by mob misunderstanding that the members of the Society of Friends were conceived as desperadoes.
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 The Recent Days (1910-1914) by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
When transgender entered the popular lexicon through the efforts of activists and aid organizations in the mid-1990s, it replaced transsexual, which had replaced transvestite, which was what they called cross-dressers and before that viragos.
From Slate ● May 14, 2018
Even the honest friendship between him and the remarkable woman he calls his "viragos" gives him many a pleasant hour.
From A Woman-Hater by Charles Reade
She felt her courage leaving her—she must be rid of this fearful band of viragos at any price.
From Joseph II. and His Court by L. (Luise) Mühlbach
No, no; 'goodness,' as you call it, don't depend on little Miss Joy, or wickedness on sharp-tempered viragos like you say your aunt is.
From Little Miss Joy by Emma Marshall
"If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old viragos in Exeter," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
From He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
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.
