dictatress
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Noun[edit]
dictatress (plural dictatresses)
- A female dictator; a dictatorial state personified as female.
- 1601, William Fulbecke, An Historicall Collection of the Continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians[1], London: William Ponsonby, Book 1, Page 86:
- […] two things he promised her, and performed for her, which were tokens of a mercilesse heart, the balefull death of his son, and the chaunge of the state, in such sort that Aurelia Orestilla should be the Dictatresse of Rome.
- 1809, Lord Byron, English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers[2], London: James Cawthorn, page 54:
- What Athens was in science, Rome in power, / What Tyre appeared in her meridian hour, / ’Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been, / Earth’s chief dictatress, ocean’s mighty queen:
- 1821, John Quincy Adams, address delivered on 4 July, 1821, cited in Antony Jay (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 4,[3]
- America […] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own […] she would involve herself beyond the power of extraction, in all the wars of interest and intrigue […] which assume the colours and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force […] She might become dictatress of the world.
- 1980, William L. Andrews, The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt, cited in Thomas Votteler (ed.), Short Story Criticism, Farmington Hills, MI: Cengage Gale, Volume 7, 1991, p. 29,[4]
- Wellington’s first wife does not belong among the overstuffed dictatresses of the white folks’ kitchen.
- 2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga, chapter 12, in This Mournable Body, Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press:
- “How about going for the Oscars? With a comedy. Or a drama. Or a tragicomedy. Let us make a new hybrid, for example, The Great African Dictatress.”