Word.ws English Dictionary

bastardess

bastardess noun: a woman who was born out of wedlock, and hence often considered an illegitimate descendant.

Noun

bastardess (plural bastardesses)

  1. (dated, rare) A woman who was born out of wedlock, and hence often considered an illegitimate descendant.
    • […]when a bastard marries a bastardess, and he has a legitimate Israelite brother :–all these marriages are indeed legal[…]1843, David Aaron De Sola, Morris Jacob Raphall, Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna, page 217
  2. (derogatory, offensive, vulgar) A contemptible, inconsiderate, overly or arrogantly rude or spiteful woman.
    • A bastardess like me would never be allowed past the door.2019, Christina Bauer, My Necromancer Romance, page 371

Forms of bastardess

pluralbastardesses

Origin of bastardess

From bastard + -ess, since 1843.

Questions about bastardess

What does bastardess mean?
Bastardess means a woman who was born out of wedlock, and hence often considered an illegitimate descendant.
What part of speech is bastardess?
Bastardess is a noun.
What is the plural of bastardess?
The plural of bastardess is bastardesses.

Words near bastardess in the dictionary

  1. bastard wing
  2. bastard wings
  3. bastard-dom
  4. bastarda
  5. bastarded
  6. bastardess
  7. bastardesses
  8. bastardhood
  9. Bastardi
  10. bastardies
  11. bastarding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bastardess (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.

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