GENTLEWOMAN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does gentlewoman mean? 

• GENTLEWOMAN (noun)
  The noun GENTLEWOMAN has 1 sense:

1. a woman of refinement

  Familiarity information: GENTLEWOMAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GENTLEWOMAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman of refinement

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

dame; gentlewoman; lady; ma'am; madam

Context example:

a chauffeur opened the door of the limousine for the grand lady

Hypernyms ("gentlewoman" is a kind of...):

adult female; woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gentlewoman"):

grande dame (a middle-aged or elderly woman who is stylish and highly respected)

madame (title used for a married Frenchwoman)

 Context examples 

It requires a gentlewoman—a Julia Bertram.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Astonished that the person who had brought me up should be a gentlewoman!

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of the pin passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

No little affectations marred it, and the cordial sweetness of her manner was more charming than the new beauty or the old grace, for it stamped her at once with the unmistakable sign of the true gentlewoman she had hoped to become.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The reason of our moving was that living was cheaper in the country, and that it was easier for my mother to keep up the appearance of a gentlewoman when away from the circle of those to whom she could not refuse hospitality.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man like Mr. Allen.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford—between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.'

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But she is really quite the gentlewoman.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

You laugh at me when I say I want to be a lady, but I mean a true gentlewoman in mind and manners, and I try to do it as far as I know how.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch’s bed chamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in writings of morality and devotion.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)