preceptress

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From preceptor +‎ -ess.

Noun

preceptress (plural preceptresses)

  1. (now rare) A female preceptor, or provider of moral instruction; a teacher. [from 18th c.]
    • 1790, Jane Austen, “Jack and Alice”, in Juvenilia:
      ‘I daily became more amiable, and might perhaps by this time have nearly attained perfection, had not my Preceptoress been torn from my arms, e'er I had attained by seventeenth year.’
    • 1852, James Fenimore Cooper, Precaution‎:
      Her preceptress had never found it necessary to repeat an admonition of any kind, since her arrival at years to discriminate between the right and the wrong.
    • 1889, Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn‎:
      She was my sister, my preceptress and friend; but she died--her end was violent, untimely, and criminal!
    • 1896, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Madelon‎:
      She had married late in life, having been previously a preceptress in a young ladies' school.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.