Word.ws English Dictionary

anchress

anchress is the alternative form of anchoress.

Meaning of anchoress

Noun (1)

anchoress (plural anchoresses)

  1. A female anchorite. A woman who chooses to withdraw from the world to live a solitary life of prayer and contemplation.
    • … and advises the anchoresses to take on the basic religious vows …2003, Yōko Wada, “A Genre of Ancrene Wisse”, in A Companion to Ancrene Wisse, DS Brewer, →ISBN, page 39
    Synonyms:
    anchoritess

Noun (2)

anchoress (plural anchoresses)

  1. (informal) An anchorwoman.
    • Williams was co-hosting in place of Katie Couric, a move some have speculated was meant to deprive the possible next anchoress of the CBS Evening News the prime time exposure.2006 February 11, James Poniewozik, “Live from Turin—Sorry, Torino—It's NBC”, in Time, archived from the original on 12 Aug 2014

Forms of anchress

pluralanchresses

Questions about anchress

What is anchress the alternative form of?
Anchress is the alternative form of anchoress.

Words near anchress in the dictionary

  1. anchovy pear
  2. anchovy pears
  3. anchovy toast
  4. anchovy toasts
  5. anchovylike
  6. anchress
  7. anchresses
  8. anchusa
  9. anchusas
  10. anchusic
  11. anchusic acid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anchress (page history and authors); anchoress (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “anchress.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anchress. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.