Word.ws English Dictionary

cicisbea

cicisbea noun: the female companion or lover of a (chiefly married) man, especially in eighteenth-century Italy.

Noun

cicisbea (plural cicisbeas or cicisbee)

  1. (historical) The female companion or lover of a (chiefly married) man, especially in eighteenth-century Italy.
    • The instant he was taken ill, he was persuaded he should dye, and refused to see anybody; even my neighbour, Anna Frescobaldi, his Cicisbea of 30 years standing was forbid.1876, Dr Doran, ‘Mann’ and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1740–1786, page 143
    • Bonducci […] had been actively courting Walpole with such projects as his Italian translation of Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, which he dedicated to Horace Walpole's cicisbea Elisabetta Capponi.2009, Paula Findlen, “Anatomy of a Lesbian”, in Findlen, Roworth & Sama, editor, Italy's Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, page 242

Forms of cicisbea

pluralcicisbeas
pluralcicisbee

Origin of cicisbea

From Italian cicisbea.

Questions about cicisbea

What does cicisbea mean?
Cicisbea means the female companion or lover of a (chiefly married) man, especially in eighteenth-century Italy.
What part of speech is cicisbea?
Cicisbea is a noun.
What is the plural of cicisbea?
The plural of cicisbea is cicisbeas.

Words near cicisbea in the dictionary

  1. cicindelids
  2. cicindeline
  3. cicindelines
  4. cicinni
  5. cicinnus
  6. cicisbea
  7. cicisbee
  8. cicisbees
  9. cicisbei
  10. cicisbeism
  11. cicisbeo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cicisbea (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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