Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A woman who commits murder.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A female who commits murder.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A woman who commits murder.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A woman who commits murder.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a woman murderer

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[murder(er) + –ess.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

murder +‎ -ess

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Examples

  • I am branded as a bigamist, 'she added bitterly;' do you fancy I wish to add the title murderess to my name? '

    A German Pompadour Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Grävenitz, Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg 1905

  • Marshal Teddy Daniels (three-time Academy Award® nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are summoned to Shutter Island to investigate the implausible disappearance of a brilliant multiple murderess from a locked room within the impenetrable Ashecliffe Hospital.

    Over 20 High Resolution Images from Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND Starring Leonardo DiCaprio – Collider.com 2010

  • My mother too is dead, and I am called her murderess, unjustly it is true, but still that injustice is mine to bear; and she that was the glory of my house, my darling child, is growing old and grey, unwedded still; and those twin brethren, called the sons of Zeus, are now no more.

    Helen 2008

  • My mother too is dead, and I am called her murderess, unjustly it is true, but still that injustice is mine to bear; and she that was the glory of my house, my darling child, is growing old and grey, unwedded still; and those twin brethren, called the sons of Zeus, are now no more.

    Helen 2008

  • Rovere, or of other smaller fry who have lent their helot's pens to weave mendacious records of her life, dubbing her murderess, adulteress, and Heaven knows what besides -- I will but refer them to the archives of Ferrara, whose Duchess she became at the age of one-and-twenty, and where she reigned for eighteen years.

    The Shame of Motley: being the memoir of certain transactions in the life of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Biancomonte, sometime fool of the court of Pesaro Rafael Sabatini 1912

  • The substance of it was that his murderess is a Miss Laura Hawkins, whom he had known at Washington as a lobbyist and had some business with her.

    The Gilded Age A tale of today Charles Dudley Warner 1864

  • They were from lovers; from some of the prominent names in the land; men whose devotion had survived even the grisly revealments of her character which the courts had uncurtained; men who knew her now, just as she was, and yet pleaded as for their lives for the dear privilege of calling the murderess wife.

    The Gilded Age A tale of today Charles Dudley Warner 1864

  • They were from lovers; from some of the prominent names in the land; men whose devotion had survived even the grisly revealments of her character which the courts had uncurtained; men who knew her now, just as she was, and yet pleaded as for their lives for the dear privilege of calling the murderess wife.

    The Gilded Age, Part 7. Charles Dudley Warner 1864

  • The substance of it was that his murderess is a Miss Laura Hawkins, whom he had known at Washington as a lobbyist and had some business with her.

    The Gilded Age, Part 6. Charles Dudley Warner 1864

  • I do not know that great physical difference existed to the advantage of the murderess between her and her older victim, Mrs Phoebe Hogg, who, with her baby, was done to death by Mrs Pearcy in October 1890, but the fact that Mrs Hogg had been battered about the head, and that the head had been almost severed from the body, would seem to indicate that the murderess was the stronger of the two women.

    She Stands Accused 1935

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