Library / English Dictionary

GENTLEWOMAN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman of refinement

Example:

a chauffeur opened the door of the limousine for the grand lady

Synonyms:

dame; gentlewoman; lady; ma'am; madam

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("gentlewoman" is a kind of...):

adult female; woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gentlewoman"):

grande dame (a middle-aged or elderly woman who is stylish and highly respected)

madame (title used for a married Frenchwoman)

Credits

 Context examples: 

I have never seen Fanny dance since she was a little girl; but I trust we shall both think she acquits herself like a gentlewoman when we do see her, which, perhaps, we may have an opportunity of doing ere long.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Never forgetting that by birth she was a gentlewoman, she cultivated her aristocratic tastes and feelings, so that when the opportunity came she might be ready to take the place from which poverty now excluded her.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Here am I, a poor desolate widow, deprived of the best of husbands, my health gone in attending and nursing him, my spirits still worse, all my peace in this world destroyed, with hardly enough to support me in the rank of a gentlewoman, and enable me to live so as not to disgrace the memory of the dear departed—what possible comfort could I have in taking such a charge upon me as Fanny?

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I only meant to observe that it ought not to be lightly engaged in, and that to make it really serviceable to Mrs. Price, and creditable to ourselves, we must secure to the child, or consider ourselves engaged to secure to her hereafter, as circumstances may arise, the provision of a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer as you are so sanguine in expecting.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)