Chieftainess
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A female chieftain.
"He gazed in silence for some minutes upon the body of Meg Merrilies, as it lay before him, with the features sharpened by death, yet still retaining the stern and energetic character which had maintained in life her superiority as the wild chieftainess of the lawless people amongst whom she was born."
- 2 The wife of a chieftain.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"He gazed in silence for some minutes upon the body of Meg Merrilies, as it lay before him, with the features sharpened by death, yet still retaining the stern and energetic character which had maintained in life her superiority as the wild chieftainess of the lawless people amongst whom she was born."
Etymology
From chieftain + -ess. Middle English had an equivalent form cheventaynes but the OED asserts the term was derived anew in modern English in the 19th century. Piecewise doublet of captainess.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.