adventureress

English

Etymology

From adventurer +‎ -ess.

Noun

adventureress (plural adventureresses)

1. (nonstandard) An adventuress.
   • 1858 August 20, Newcastle Courant, number 9582, page 6, column 5:

     Again, if we have dangerovs^[sic] men in the humblest ranks, we have adventureresses of late years in all ranks.

   • 1871 May, “Mr. Fitz-Hume’s Experiment; and How It Succeeded”, in For Everybody, volume 1, number 3, Buffalo, N.Y., page [6], column 1:

     I’ll foil them though, the mean adventureresses!

   • 1871 August 25, The Fremont Weekly Journal, volume XIX, number 3[?], Fremont, Oh., page [2], column 5:

     And now from Dayton we hear concerning the operations of a notorous^[sic] adventureress and impostor hailing from this place, who has been repeatedly exposed. […] A letter addressed to Deacon ⸻ of that place, by a person who doubted the young woman’s story, brought the information, on Tuesday, that she is a wandering adventureress who is playing the paralysis dodge in order to make money.

   • 1885 August 8, The Atchison Weekly Champion, volume 28, number 23 (Champion Series) / volume 31, number 25 (Squatter Sovereign Series), Atchison, Kan., front page, column 2:

     It is said that there are 60,000 “adventureresses.” “Adventureress” means almost anything.

   • 1887 May 6, “Matrimonial Decoy Duck. How Sharp-Witted Parisians and a Pretty American Made Money.”, in The Daily American, volume XII, number 3,889, Nashville, Tenn., page 8, column 4:

     Some months ago, writes a Paris correspondent, a couple of adventureresses were arrested for having worked a matrimonial agency, which was in reality an effective machinery for decoying men on the lookout for rich wives.

   • 1887 September 25, Blakely Hall, chapter II, in J. H. Estill, editor, The Morning News, Savannah, Ga., page 2, column 2:

     It sticks to the novel closely and makes the heroine, “Lena Despard,” an adventureress of desperate wickedness.

   • 1887 October 24, Parisina, “Luxury and Vice”, in Daily Nebraska State Journal, eighteenth year, number 106, Lincoln, Neb., published 3 December 1887, page 2, column 4:

     Woe to the financier who confides his money affairs to frail female ears; to the diplomat or public functionary, civil or military, who blabs out office secrets, or makes use of the supposed influence of one or any of these adventureresses.

   • 1890 June 9, “Kansas City, Missouri. Passenger Rates Placed in the Old Notch To-day. The Scott Tickets Not a Disturbing Factor in the Settlement—Texas Cattle Rates to be Slashed—Local Matters in the City Across the Line.”, in The Kansas City Gazette, volume IV, number 70, Kansas City, Kan., page [3], column 3:

     Mollie claims that she was enticed away from her home by Charles Burton, but the young man declares that she is an adventureress and is merely trying to work him for money.

   • 1891 February 22, “Among Literati”, in The Topeka Capital-Journal\The Topeka Daily Capital, volume XIII, number 46, Topeka, Kan., page 14, column 3:

     Neither does she want to admit to her salon, under the mask of a “newspaper correspondent” or “literary woman,” the adventureress who is using a certain tact in letters to cleverly enlarge her field of action, or to make respectable people objects of malicious ridicule or abuse.

   • 1893 February 3, “Stray Sparks”, in Portage Daily Democrat, volume 2, number 17, Portage, Wis., front page, column 2:

     A Paris dispatch says two Italian adventureresses were yesterday ordered to leave France in forty-eight hours.

   • 1893 September 21, “Says Nay Again. Mr. Charles J. Bronston Still Insists He is Not a Candidate. He Says He Will Not Take Advantage of a Prostrate Foe and Asks That His Name Be Not Considred^[sic] in Con-Connection^[sic] With the Congressional Succession.”, in The Kentucky Leader, Lexington, Ky., page 7, column 3:

     […] but since the unfortunate embarrassment of Colonel Breckinridge, attendant upon his being made, as he believes, the victim of a shrewd adventureress and schemer, he has been, and still is, unwilling that his name should be further used, until Colonel Breckinridge and his friends, one of whom Mr. Bronston claims to be, “shall have had full opportunity to restore him to that confidence which his past official career, brilliant attachments and personal integrity have so richly deserved.”

   • 1894 December 22, “With the Bangtails. Running Race Results at Alexander Island and Roby.”, in Buffalo Courier, volume LIX, number 356, Buffalo, N.Y., page 10, column 4:

     Third race 4 1-2 furlong Parthenia, 115 (Tribe), 1 to 2, 1; Adventureress, 115 (Godfrey), 8 to 1, 2; Jolly Bov, 118 (Murphy), 8 to 1, 3; time, 1:17 3-4. Waywayonda, Vexatio geld, Berwick, Prince Marie, John Rudden, Boonton, Delia M. also ran.

   • 1895 February 20, “The Age of Consent. Fixed for Boys by the New Hampshire Legislature.”, in Elmira Gazette, volume LXXI, number 40, Elmira, N.Y., page 1, column 5:

     Mr. Strong, of Lebannon, who introduced the bill, said several scandals had resulted in this vicinity from marriages into which adventureress had inveigled the sons of rich parents.

   • 1895 March 17, “Talk of the Treaty; German-American Extradition Is Being Discussed. Present Arrangements Are Not Satisfactory to Either Country and New Plans Are Absolutely Necessary to Carrying on the Interchange of Criminals—America Is More Interested in the Change—How the German Emperor Presides Over the Council—General Berlin Gossip.”, in The Chicago Sunday Tribune, volume LIV, number 76, Chicago, Ill., page 9, column 3:

     A recent extradition case at Hamburg, the person involved being a clever adventureress who passed herself off in Berlin and elsewhere as the Archduchess Theresa d’Este, and victimized several persons to the amount of 200,000 marks ($40,000), is the direct cause of reopening the negotiations for a revision of the treaty.

   • 1895 October 24, “For Next Week. Another of Frohman’s Plays to Be Given in Champaign.”, in The Champaign Daily Gazette, number 3718, Champaign, Ill., page 1, column 2:

     The adventureress, failing to win the injured lover’s attachment, pools her issues with those of the male villian till more and striking complications ensue.

   • 1897 August 6, “Known in Los Angeles”, in The Nebraska State Journal, twenty-seventh year, Lincoln, Neb., page 8, column 5:

     C. M. Martin, the horseman, identifies them as two adventureresses, who “worked” the coast a few years ago.

   • 1897 November 25, “Preacher Given a Divorce”, in The St. Joseph Herald, volume XLVI, number 329, St. Joseph, Mo., page 4, column 6:

     He declared in his speech that he had been victimized by the bold adventureress with whom he had become infatuated.

   • 1898 March 12, “Ordeal by Fire”, in The London Reader of Literature, Science, Art, and General Information, volume LXX, number 1819, chapter XV, page 517, column 3:

     And, Archie, don’t tell your mother what you have just said or she will be imagining Miss Lester an adventureress of the deepest dye.

   • 1898 December 15, The County Courant, volume XXV, number 13, Cottonwood Falls, Kan., page [4], column 2:

     This delightful adventureress yet claims that her trunks and other baggage that has been lost will come around all right and that she will be able to prove that she is whom she claims to be.

   • 1900 December 7, “The End of a Princess”, in Buffalo Evening News, volume XLI, number 47, Buffalo, N.Y., page 3, column 3:

     The princess, deserted and alone, shamed her parentage by joining the legion of adventureresses at Budapest, and fell lower and lower as her beauty gradually faded.

   • 1904 June 21, “In the Theaters Last Evening”, in The Pittsburg Post, Pittsburg[h], Pa., page 6, column 7:

     J. I. White assumes the role of villain, and with Alma Chester, who plays the part of the adventureress, receives hisses enough to suit almost anyone.

   • 1905 July 7, “Dover Theatre Royal: The Curate”, in The Dover Express and East Kent News, number 2453, Dover, Kent, page 7, column 5:

     Gilbert is also a Russian spy, and carries on an intrigue with a Russian adventureress (Miss Isabel Norman).

   • 1906 January 23, “Countess Had Run Whole Social Gamut in Half a Century”, in The Raleigh Evening Times, volume 27, Raleigh, N.C., page 8, column 2:

     Since the arrival in Philadelphia nearly fifty years ago the “Countess de Beetancourt,” found dead and supposed to have been murdered on Tuesday, has established a record as an adventureress as inexplicable as it is unequaled.

   • 1910 May 7, “Philanderers. Breach of Promise Laws No Safeguard to Women’s Happiness.”, in The Washington Post, number 12,385, Washington, D.C., page 6, column 7:

     There are more adventureresses and blackmailers who are willing to go into court than there are respectable women who will ask a court to estimate in dollars the compensatory damages due to the possessor of a broken heart.

   • 1910 January 8, “Family Theater”, in The Butte Inter Mountain, volume XXVIII, number 304, Butte, Mont., page 10, column 1:

     Sensations abound in this exciting melodramatic production dealing with the life of a French adventureress, madly in love with a counterfeiter, whom she betrays when she learns he has secretly wedded a famous female detective, only to aid him to escape when the officers are about to arrest him.

   • 1910 June 29, “Story of Barefoot Boy and Gay Society Belle; It Runs the Gamut of Human Passions to Murder”, in The Tacoma Times, volume VII, number 164, Tacoma, Wash., page one, column 2:

     A Decade of the Lives of Porter Charlton and His Murdered Wife Tells a Thrilling Story of an Adventureress’ Life and Teems with Love, Intrigue, Revelry and May End in Italian Dungeon.

   • 1911 February 15, “Theatrical: At Staub’s”, in The Journal and Tribune, volume XVIII, number 229, Knoxville, Tenn., page 7, column 6:

     The prattle of an innocent child, the tears of an old blind mother, the strong love of a simple country girl, the passion of an adventureress, the truth of a half wit, theh^[sic] love of an old negro and the tender memory of a dead mother of the past Governor or Arkansas, are all cleverly intermingled by the deft hand of the author of this absorbing tale of the Arkansas Hills.

   • 1913 June 26, “Red. Through the Green Earth Runs a Red Stream. It Is the Blood of Men.”, in The Roanoke News, volume XLVIII, number 9, Weldon, N.C., front page, column 4:

     For long it was the custom upon the stage to dress every adventureress, every woman of the half world, in clothes of this shade.

   • 1913 October 23, “Drive Her Away”, in The Mebane Leader, volume 4, number 9, Mebane, N.C., page [4], column 2:

     We have no patience with her, we detest her a political hag, an irresponsable^[sic] adventureress.

   • 1913 December 11, “May Roberts Coming”, in The Conrad Independent, volume 3, number 47, Conrad, Mont., front page, column 5:

     The engagement will open with a production of “The Adventureress,” which is said to be a splendid play.

   • 1914 February 17, “Grand Theatre”, in Princeton Clarion-News, volume XXII, number 14, Princeton, Ind.: Clarion Publishing Company, (Inc.) Publishers, page [4], column 4:

     WHO KILLED OLGA CAREW—Two part Imp drama, with a photographer, an artist and an adventureress; […]

   • 1914 April 2, “So Easy to Fool New York”, in The Enid Morning News, Enid, Okla., page three, column 1:

     This is the story of a successful adventureress: Two weeks ago the manager of the Hotel Biltimore—which is the newest plush lined pile in town—spoke to the cashier.

   • 1914 July 26, “Varieties on Orpheum Bill”, in The Anaconda Standard, volume XXV, number 326, Anaconda, Mont., page 6, column 2:

     Fogg falls victim to an adventureress and becomes married.

   • 1914 October 30, “The Beloved Adventurer”, in The Call, number 44, Schuylkill Haven, Pa., page 3, column 3:

     Decidedly she must be saved from the mean schemes of the adventureress.

   • 1915 June 24, “Taken to Lincoln: New Developments in Scottsbluff Murder Case Made Removal of Jordan Necessary”, in The Alliance Herald, volume XXII, number 29, Alliance, Neb., page [4], column 3:

     Mrs. Layton posed as Jordan’s daughter, but it would seem that she is an adventureress of the worst type and that she and Jordan planned to kill Layton and gain possession of his money.

   • 1915 October 20, “Matinee of 7 Keys to Baldpate Today”, in Allentown Democrat, volume 91, number 144, Allentown, Pa., eighth page, column 2:

     […] a beautiful woman, who tells the novelist that she is the wife of the railroad president, but who in reality is an adventureress with designs on the $200,000 and a crooked mayor and his man, who also claim the hidden wealth.

   • 1917 February 3, “Kerrigan Picture Here. A Spectacular Picture Will Be Shown At the Rath Monday.”, in Dodge City Daily Globe, volume 6, number 47, Dodge City, Kan., page three, column 4:

     Maude George, one of the cleverest of actresses who play the adventureress and the conniving woman, is another handsome woman found in congenial circumstances.

   • 1917 February 8, “Evil Women Do Is Coming to Quality: Bluebird Feature Will Be the Show Here on Tuesday February 13”, in The Southwestern News and Leader, volume III, number 5, Elk City, Okla., page eight:

     Because a well bred and beautiful girl objected to her father marrying, his second wife, a Parisian adventureress, she paid dearly.

   • 1918 October 10, “The Melting Pot”, in The Pawhuska Capital, volume 15, number 29, Pawhuska, Okla., page [3], column 1:

     Many adventureresses have been marrying several American soldiers each, in order to get the allotment of pay granted by the government to wives of soldiers.

   • 1920 September 1, ““Clerk Faces Problem of Spending Millions”, in Montgomery Times, volume 36, Montgomery, Ala., page [8], column 2:

     He must guard himself from beggars, cranks, curiosity seekers, matchmakers, adventurers and adventureresses and people who want to sell him things.

   • 1924 August 8, “Theaters”, in The Daily Dawn, volume I, number 124, Coffeyville, Kan., page one, column 5:

     At the Columbia Theater starting today, Rex Beach’s “Recoil,” a drama of beautiful adventureresses, featuring Betty Blythe and Mahlon Hamilton with a large cast including Europes^[sic] ten most beautiful women.

   • 1929 October 18, Rupert Hughe, “Souls for Sale”, in The Democrat-American, volume 22, number 41 (Sequoyah Co. Democrat) / volume 4, number 36 (The Sallisaw American), Sallisaw, Okla., page [10], column 2:

     She must be at heart a bad woman; one of those adventureresses.

   • 1930 February 9, “ABE MARTIN: On The Land O’ the Free”, in The Wichita Eagle Sunday Magazine, Wichita, Kan., page six, column 4:

     All ages have had ther charmin’ women, but they’ve been mostly sorceresses, an’ adventureresses, go-gitters, an’ the like.

   • 1930 April 21, Gilbert Swan, “In New York”, in Daily News Standard, volume 42, number 108, Uniontown, Pa., page four:

     Adventurers and soldiers of fortune, adventureresses and ladies of fortune, drift in from many lands.

   • 1933 June 30, William Foster, ““Fool and Fire”--Thrilling Serial”, in California Eagle, volume 46, number 6, Los Angeles, Calif., page five:

     Now this one ‘A Woman Must Not Lose Her Heart;’ this one, ‘Madame Felicia, the Mill Girl Smarted Herself Into the Royal Court;’ this one, ‘Racquel, the Spanish Adventureress Came Near Turning Over an Empire;’ this one, ‘Titina Emptied Three or Four Country Treasuries;’ those were the women.

   • 1947, Dorothy E. Cook, Estelle A. Fidell, editors, Fiction Catalog: 1942-1946 Supplement to the 1941 Edition: A Subject, Author and Title List of 1451 Works of Fiction in the English Language with Annotations, New York, N.Y.: The H. W. Wilson Company, page 50, column 2:

     “Rony Brace, bride of the proud invalid. Eric Chatonier, goes with him to his home in New Orleans, where she is made to feel an interloper and an adventureress by the strange members of his family. Her unhappy position is complicated still further when two murders are committed in swift succession.”

   • 1935 January 27, Sam Adkins, “Many Laughs Offered At Shows This Week: ‘The County Chairman’, With Will Rogers, Is Hilarious Film at Tennessee; ‘The Scarlet Empress’ at Riviera Called Elab orate and Glamorous”, in The Knoxville Sunday Journal, volume XI, number 7, Knoxville, Tenn., pages 11—C, column 2:

     Crooks, desert drives, and all sorts of adventurers and adventureresses play big part in “Fugitive Lady,” which will come to the Riviera Friday and Saturday.

   • 1956, Cecil Dryden, By Sea on the Tonquin, Caldwell, Ida.: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., →LCCN, page 221:

     The adventureresses had indeed fared well. They arrived at Okanogan with twenty-six horses, fathoms upon fathoms of higua, deerskin garments, and buffalo robes uncounted.

   • 1970 January 2, Gordon Aalborg, “West’s wild women”, in The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Alta., page 53, column 5:

     Scarlet ladies, gambling women, adventureresses; they’re all magnificently represented in this most readable history book that tells it like it was.

   • 1970 May 10, Ann Newman, “Books in OUR Town”, in The Terre Haute Tribune-Star, volume 40, number 11, Terre Haute, Ind., page 38, column 6:

     Among them were adventureresses, professional gamblers and wom-[…]

   • 1976, Myron J. Smith, Jr., Cloak-and-Dagger bibliography: An Annotated Guide to Spy Fiction, 1937-1975, Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 100:

     The heroine of this author’s writing is The Baroness who appears to the outside world as simply an international playgirl. Those in the know (which now includes you) soon find that she is a top adventureress-agent à la Modesty Blaise.

   • 1984, “Guillaume Apollinaire”, in Frank N. Magill, editor, Critical Survey of Poetry: Foreign Language Series, volume 1 (Authors, A-D), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, →ISBN, page 49:

     Born in Rome on August 26, 1880, Wilhelm Apollinairis de Kostrowitzky was an illegitimate child; in “The Thief,” he says that his “father was asphinx and his mother a night.” In reality, his mother was a Polish adventureress of noble ancestry, Angelique Kostrowicka, known in Paris mostly as Olga.

   • 1988, Kate Novak, Jeff Grubb, Azure Bonds, TSR, Inc., →ISBN, page 146:

     “Hmmm. You two start breaking camp,” the adventureress ordered. “I’ll fetch him, and we’ll be off. I’m not inclined to hang around here.”

   • 1994, Mike Benton, “Will Eisner”, in Masters of Imagination: The Comic Book Artists Hall of Fame, Dallas, Tex.: Taylor Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 10, column 1:

     To fill out the sixteen-page section, [Will] Eisner created two backup features for the Spirit: “Lady Luck,” a glamorous adventureress, and “Mr. Mystic,” a reworking of his “Yarko, the Great Magician.”

   • 2001 March 30, Ashok Chandwani, “Thailande a sure track to spicy bliss”, in The Gazette, Montreal, Que., page D 12:

     Eager to make amends and fed up with the cheap noodleries, Chinese restaurants and pricey, trendoid Thai places that all claim to serve good food from that enchanted land but don’t, I returned to this old haunt with a favourite adventureress.

   • 2002 February 22, Nicholas de Jongh, “Escapist pleasure as Vanessa and Joely share stage”, in Evening Standard, London, page 7:

     [Oscar] Wilde, being a first-class subversive, implies that the Wicked Lady, an unshamed adventureress and serial lover, ought be admired for the courage of her convictions: by contrast he mocks the aristocrats as immoralists desperate to be caught in a good light.

   • 2003, Gabriel Duffy, “Class/Family”, in Sham to Rock: Growing Up in Forties and Fifties Dublin, Aengus Books, →ISBN, page 37:

     As far as I was concerned, bubbly little Aunt Nell was mustard (nice hot stuff). She’d married early – an English butcher who died soon after, leaving her enough money to set up as a global adventureress, with occasionally stints as a teacher in exotic places, like Kenya and California.

   • 2004, Bérénice Reynaud, “For Wanda”, in Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath, Noel King, editors, The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s, Amsterdam University Press, →ISBN, part three (People and Places), page 226:

     Kazan often calls Loden “a bitch”, and saw her as bold, fearless, a sexual adventureress, maybe a golddigger – while her close collaborators, Nicholas (Nick) T. Proferes who shot and edited the film, and Michael Higgins who played Mr. Dennis to her Wanda, perceived her as “insecure” and “sensitive”.

   • 2005, Jess Nevins, The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, MonkeyBrain Books, →ISBN, back cover:

     “This encyclopedia begins where all the figures who haunt us today seem to have begun: right in the middle of Victoria, where the monsters began to flourish, and the adventureresses, the swashbucklers, the great detectives, the savants, the evil financiers, the exiles, the spies, the courtesans, the thuggees, the vampires, the heroes who do not die, the brave boys who invent […]”

   • 2009, The Marvel Comics Encyclopedia: A Complete Guide to the Characters of the Marvel Universe, DK, →ISBN, page 188:

     Lilith (dracula’s daughter) FIRST APPEARANCE Giant-Size Chillers Vol. 1 #1 (June 1974) REAL NAME Unrevealed OCCUPATION Adventureress BASE South of France HEIGHT 6 ft WEIGHT 125lbs EYES Red HAIR Black

   • 2011 January 4, Tim Doherty, “Birthday gift of a lifetime”, in Hattiesburg American, Hattiesburg, Miss., page 1A:

     “If she [Lisa Freeman] were a man, you could say she has a lot of testosterone,” he [Luther Freeman] said, smiling. “She’s an adventureress. She white-water rafts and snow skis, scuba dives and does all sorts of things, and she decided back several years ago that she wanted to skydive.

References

• R[obert] W[illiam] Burchfield, editor (1996), “-ess”, in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, third edition, Oxford, Oxon: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 263, column 1:

  There were some other refinements, e.g. the substitution of governess (already in Caxton) for the earlier governeresse; the emergence of sorceress (14c., Chaucer) from the common-gender sorcer (14c.–1549, now obs.) before the masc. form sorcerer (1526, Tyndale); and the establishment of the phonetically simplified forms adventuress (1754, Walpole; not *adventureress), conqueress (now obs.), etc.