Word.ws English Dictionary

beldame

/ˈbɛldəm/

beldame noun: a grandmother.

Noun

beldame (plural beldames)

  1. (obsolete) A grandmother.
    • There he was welcom'd of that honeſt ſyre, / And of his aged Beldame homely well; / Who him beſought himſelfe to diſattyre, / And reſt himſelfe, till ſupper time befell.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, page 470
    • Diſeaſed nature oftentimes breakes forth, / In ſtrange eruptions, oft the teeming earth / Is with a kind of collicke pincht and vext, / By the impriſoning of vnruly wind / Within her vvombe, vvhich for enlargement ſtriuing / Shakes the old Beldame earth, and topples down / Steeples and moſſegrovvn...c. 1597 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The History of Henrie the Fourth; […], quarto edition, London: […] P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1598, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]
  2. (archaic) An old woman, particularly an ugly one.
    • Justice is an old hobbling beldame, and I can't get her to keep pace with Generosity, for the soul of me.1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, IV.i
    • […] have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], Jane Eyre. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    crone, hag, harridan

beldame meaning in Urdu

beldame in Urdu

بڑھیا, ڈھڈو

Examples of beldame in a sentence

  • Therefore, the teacher of to-day is not the graybeard and beldame, but the man and woman most newly filled with the gathered experience of the world.1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics – A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social...
  • The tablets upon which the events of the day were recorded refer to enchantresses, and we can conclude that they were by no means restricted to ancient beldames.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 25:
  • Among the large number of characters are [...] young boys and old knowledgeable beldames familiar with every lubricity, every love charm and potion.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 62:

Synonyms of beldame

Antonyms

Forms of beldame

pluralbeldames
alternative formbeldam

Origin of beldame

Inherited from late (1400–1450) Middle English beldame, beldam, from Middle English bel (“attractive, fine, good”) (from Old French bel (“beautiful”), from Latin bellus) + dame, dam (“a mother, lady”), itself ultimately from Latin domina (“a mistress, lady”).

Words that rhyme with beldame

Questions about beldame

What does beldame mean?
Beldame means a grandmother.
What is beldame in Urdu?
Beldame in Urdu is بڑھیا, ڈھڈو. See Beldame meaning in Urdu.
How do you use beldame in a sentence?
Therefore, the teacher of to-day is not the graybeard and beldame, but the man and woman most newly filled with the gathered experience of the world.
What part of speech is beldame?
Beldame is a noun.
How do you pronounce beldame?
Beldame is pronounced /ˈbɛldəm/.
What is the plural of beldame?
The plural of beldame is beldames.

Words near beldame in the dictionary

  1. belcomethasone
  2. Belcoo
  3. Belcourt
  4. Belcourts
  5. beldam
  6. beldame
  7. beldames
  8. beldams
  9. beldamship
  10. Belden
  11. Beldens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beldame (page history and authors); beldame (Urdu Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-beldame.wav.

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