GOVERNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does governess mean? 

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

1. a woman entrusted with the care and supervision of a child (especially in a private home)

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• GOVERNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman entrusted with the care and supervision of a child (especially in a private home)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

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

instructor; teacher (a person whose occupation is teaching)

 Context examples 

I shall continue to act as Adele's governess; by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Can't you do the same with your governess?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess?

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The girl, who had been out of order, was carried by her governess to take the air about an hour’s distance, or thirty miles from town.

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

I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to visit.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Very few governesses in England are getting £ 100 a year.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

What would your governess and your uncle say to see them used for such a purpose?

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

You are better placed here; very fit for a wife, but not at all for a governess.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

What sort of a ménage is it which pays double the market price for a governess but does not keep a horse, although six miles from the station?

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)