Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A woman who seeks social and financial advancement by unscrupulous means. See Usage Note at -ess.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A female adventurer; a woman engaged in or capable of bold enterprises, especially enterprises of equivocal character.
Wiktionary
- n. A female adventurer; a woman who seeks adventure.
- n. A woman of doubtful reputation or suspected character who pursues personal advancement, especially by sexual means; a demirep.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A female adventurer; a woman who tries to gain position by equivocal means.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a woman adventurer
Etymologies
- From adventure + -ess. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Despite her aloofness, Mrs. Grant did now and then steal a glance at Mrs. Pope to see if this brazen creature [526] would betray in any manner the fact that she was sleeping with the senator, but the adventuress was a wily one who disclosed nothing.”
“Hum -- maybe my adventuress was the same person in disguise," Mr. Palmer thoughtfully observed.”
“Meanwhile, Irene Adler has been running around as the kind of adventuress I thought "adventuress" meant when I was a little kid reading the first few paragraphs of "A Scandal in Bohemia".”
“It was exciting, it was really valuable, to have to that extent rubbed shoulders with an "adventuress"; it showed one that for the adventuress there might on occasion be much to be said.”
“adventuress," which has an ugly sound, but of which no one exactly knows the precise meaning, began to be bruited about.”
“adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old”
“Of the specials, the second, Planet of the Dead (disc two), is my favorite, because it introduced the high-class thief and adventuress Lady Christina, played by Michelle Ryan (The Bionic Woman).”
“Carstairs' wife, the mysterious foreign adventuress.”
The Guardian: The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz – review
“Think Buenos Aires, runaway Nazis, giant dice in the opening shot and musical numbers – all grafted on to a three-way melodrama of outrageous sexual provocation and emotional blackmail that's played like a minuet by scheming adventuress Hayworth and her two knock-kneed beaus itinerant gambler Glenn Ford and scarfaced casino boss George Macready on a gigantic, lavishly appointed set that amounts to a fantasia on mid-century Hollywood's notions of Latin-Americanness.”
“Frankie then sets off for Paris and en route keeps company with a spinster adventuress.”
The Huffington Post: Thomas Gladysz: She's So Unusual: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘adventuress’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Regency romance
bombazine, sprigged muslin, adventuress, clocks, neckcloth, pelisse, ruined, phaeton, four in hand, bonnet, sarcenet, faro and 20 more...
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