Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A woman who is a skilled and usually professional storyteller, poet, or other spoken-word performer.
- noun A female singer whose performance of song lyrics is especially expressive.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Madame Cleo, who is now as widely known as a diseuse, a liseuse, a friseuse and a clairvoyante, leaped into sudden prominence last November by her startling announcement that the seven letters in the Kaiser's name W i l h e l m represented the seven great beasts of the apocalypse; in the next month she electrified all Paris by her disclosure that the four letters of the word C z a r-- by substituting the figure 1 for C, 9 for Z, 1 for A, and 7 for R produce the date 1917, and indicated a revolution in Russia.
The Hohenzollerns in America Stephen Leacock 1906
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Her mother was Florence Margaret Poaps the youngest of five children of Jacob Vincent Poaps, born in Osnabruck On about 1890, and who at one time performed on the stage in NY city as a “diseuse”.
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A conscientious attempt has been made to trace the life and career of Yvette Guilbert from her childhood in the Parisian gutter (or not far removed from it), through her glittering supremacy as a fin de siècle diseuse, on into the years of waning prestige and cultural pretension, and so to her last days, harassed and impecunious, in the bleak Provence of 1944.
This Was Not Yvette Raven, Simon 1965
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A small platform had been erected at one end, and as Diana and Miss Lermontof entered, a French _diseuse_ was just ascending it preparatory to reciting in her native tongue.
The Splendid Folly Margaret Pedler
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Il a visiblement les moyens de s'offrir les flatteries des trois jolies filles tout en exigeant de la vieille diseuse qu'elle lui rende l'une de ces piécettes dont il a pris la précaution de gonfler ostensiblement la bourse qu'on lui coupe.
Entretiens / Interviews / Entrevistas Marie Lebert
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Bref la "société de l'information", c'est le jeu des regards dans le tableau de de La Tour: "La diseuse de bonne aventure".
Entretiens / Interviews / Entrevistas Marie Lebert
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Let us now see what the great _diseuse_ thinks of dramas and dramatists.
Our Stage and Its Critics By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette" Edward Fordham Spence 1896
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With special guest Fran Landesman, poet, lyricist, diseuse, whose life is a big tapestry of rich experience and although she's in her eighties now is still possessed of a naughty wit and wry insight that continues to astonish.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010
qms commented on the word diseuse
A sultry seductive chanteuse
Her hypnotic voice fairly purrs.
I once was quite smitten
By Eartha, sweet Kitten,
The actress and charming diseuse.
April 5, 2016