commissionairess

English

Etymology

From commissionaire +‎ -ess.

Noun

commissionairess (plural commissionairesses)

1. A female commissionaire.
   • 1903 February 22, “Hon. Mr. Commissioner Title for School Man. Brooklyn Experts Take Up the Proposition Affecting Dignity of the Schools. May a Teacher Talk of Board?”, in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, volume 63, number 52, Brooklyn, N.Y., section “Honors Ought to Be Prominent”, page 8, column 1:

     “What if women commissioners should be appointed?” asked the Doubter. “Create the title, ‘commissionairess’,” said the Serious Minded.

   • 1915, The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality, volume XCI, page 30, column 3:

     […] but when the door was opened for him and he had to an address he remembered that he wanted to go nowhere in particular, unless to see the second commissionairess forty yards further on.

   • 1915 May 25, “Mr. Gossip”, “Echoes of the Town And Round About”, in Daily Sketch, number 1,937, London, page 5, column 2:

     The Commissionairess. Have you noticed how the women doorkeepers outside the big stores have already hit off exactly the pose of the old commissionaires? There is something about a doorkeeper unlike any other mortal—a certain Olympian, if polite, contempt of the ordinary shopping person, a congenital distrust of the lap dog. Woman, wonderful creature, has acquired all that in a week. She treads the pavement as though she had just bought it; she glances up at the shop windows, not with a woman’s usual acquisitive glance, but with a “still there, are you?” look. To see her blow her whistle is an education; to see her summon a motor is an event.

   • 1915 December 3, conducted by “Egeria”, “Mainly for Women”, in Buenos Aires Herald: Illustrated Weekly Edition, number 594, Buenos Aires, section “Their Brothers’ Jobs”, page 14, columns 2–3:

     The Commissionairess. “My duties? Oh, light enough in a way, though they make you feel rather slow now and then. It doesn’t want much energy to whistle up a taxi, does it? “But the uniform! Just look at it! The skirt! Did you ever see such a cut? Why, it might have been made for my grandmother!” “And the hat! How could any girl with an oval face like mine look nice in a hat without a brim? “No, the work isn’t hard. But the uniform!”

   • 1916, “Mr. Punch’s War-time Revue”, in Punch, or The London Charivari, volume CLI, page 22:

     Corps of Commissionairesses.

   • 1916, The Homestead, page 3:

     […] minister-girls, and commissionairesses, who are filling the places of men […]

   • 1916 April 1, “Mr. Gossip”, “Echoes of the Town: Serbian And Greek Princes Here—Young Sailor Viscount—Who Buys Plovers’ Eggs?”, in Daily Sketch, number 2,204, London, section “A Job Requiring Nerve”, page 5, column 3:

     Every now and again some of the West End shops are seized with the craze of exhibiting lady commissionaires in fancy costume. After a time many of them disappear (the commissionairesses, not the shops), possibly because they cannot stand the curious and amused glances of passers-by or the impertinent “asides” of messenger boys. Yesterday I saw that another shop—in Regent-street—had started. A pretty girl dressed up in comic opera Hussar’s uniform was trying to look unconcerned.

   • 1916 July 26, Claudine Cleve, “Women and the War”, in The Illustrated War News. Being a Pictorial Record of the Great War., volume 1, part 7, London: […] the Illustrated London News and Sketch, Ltd., […], page 34, column 1:

     SINCE women have taken a prominent part in all sorts of public services, life all round has become much more pleasant. The magistrate who made such complimentary remarks about the “conductorette” the other day was really expressing the general opinion about the “footwoman” and the van-woman, the lift-woman and the page-girl, the commissionairess in her smart braided uniform, and all those other “war workers” in unaccustomed professions who have now become an accepted fact of life.

   • 1963, Sind Muslim College Magazine, page 19, column 1:

     An exceptionally whimsical fact about this Wooden Curtain is, that those who have once been granted the right to live behind it, can, by all means, at all times, come out of it—except on a few occasions when the gigantic and direful commissionairesses’, probably under instructions from the authorities, are guarding all approaches to the Free World: but the inhabitants of the ‘Free World’ cannot at any time, under any circumstances, enter the territory behind the Wooden Curtain.

   • 1968 October 16, Don Bachardy, [Letter to Christopher Isherwood]; republished as Katherine Bucknell, editor, The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 2014, 2013, →ISBN, page 323:

     A call from Joan Axelrod’s secretary to tell me she and her commissionairess waited lunch for me yesterday.

   • 1979, The Baker Street Journal, Fordham University Press, page 56:

     Susan Karp and Sharon Kass, Co-Commissionairesses