SCHOOLMISTRESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does schoolmistress mean? 

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

1. a woman schoolteacher (especially one regarded as strict)

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SCHOOLMISTRESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman schoolteacher (especially one regarded as strict)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

mistress; schoolma'am; schoolmarm; schoolmistress

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

school teacher; schoolteacher (a teacher in a school below the college level)

 Context examples 

The life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I was a lusus naturae, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous history, if known, would make a delightful romance.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his cousin?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short," I answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)