dames

Noun

dame (plural dames)

1. (UK) Usually capitalized as Dame: a title equivalent to Sir for a female knight.
   • Dame Edith Sitwell
2. (UK) A matron at a school, especially Eton College.
   • Even though the dames’ houses were being gradually phased out at Eton, [John Henry] Newman was enthusiastic about the arrangement since it met one of the promoters’ key demands; besides, he had experienced something similar as a boy at Ealing School, where the boarding houses were also under the...2005, Paul Shrimpton, “Darnell’s School”, in A Catholic Eton?: Newman’s Oratory School, Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, →ISBN, page 88
3. (UK) In traditional pantomime: a melodramatic female often played by a man in drag.
   • [page 73, column 2] Mother Goose was produced on the 29th of December; Simmons playing the Old Dame; […] [page 74, column 1] Bugle condemns her to the ducking-stool, a sentence opposed by Colin, who espouses the cause of the Old Dame, who, escaping from her persecutors, puts an end to the wedding...1870 January 29, “English Pantomime. In Two Parts.—Part II.”, in William, Robert Chambers, editors, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art, volume VII (Fourth Series), number 318...
4. (US, dated, informal, slightly derogatory) A woman.
   • I can see that would be the kind of a chap that the dames would stand for everlastingly.1903 March, Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Lieutenant-Governor: A Novel, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Riverside Press, Cambridge [Mass.], →OCLC, page 37
5. (archaic) A lady, a woman.
   • Now, thou, deare dame, that workſte theſe ſweete effectes in mee, / Vouchsafe my zeale, that onely ſeeke to ſerve and honour thee.1576, George Whetstone, “The Castle of Delight: […]”, in The Rocke of Regard, […], London: […] [H. Middleton] for Robert Waley, →OCLC; republished in J[ohn] P[ayne] Collier, editor, The Rocke of...
6. The hereditary feudal ruler (seigneur) of Sark, when the title is held by a woman in her own right.

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