Word.ws English Dictionary

duenna

/duˈɛ.nə/

duenna noun: a chaperon of a young lady, usually an older woman.

Noun

duenna (plural duennas)

  1. A chaperon of a young lady, usually an older woman.
    • 'Madam, I have a secret to tell you.' Now the very word secret is enough to rouse any one's curiosity; and, giving a quick glance round to see if her duennas were on the alert, she prepared to listen, and I saw that her eye had caught sight of the letter.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 193
    • Then he placed her in a house and shut her up in a chamber, appointing ten old women as duennas to guard her, and forbade her to go forth to the Seven Palaces.1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Pantheon Books
  2. A governess or nanny.

Forms of duenna

pluralduennas

Origin of duenna

From Old Spanish duenna or dueña, from Vulgar Latin donna, from Latin domina (“Lady”). Doublet of dame.

Words formed from duenna

Questions about duenna

What does duenna mean?
Duenna means a chaperon of a young lady, usually an older woman.
What part of speech is duenna?
Duenna is a noun.
How do you pronounce duenna?
Duenna is pronounced /duˈɛ.nə/.
What is the plural of duenna?
The plural of duenna is duennas.

Words near duenna in the dictionary

  1. duende
  2. duendes
  3. dueness
  4. Duenez
  5. Duenezes
  6. duenna
  7. duennadom
  8. duennas
  9. duennaship
  10. Duensing
  11. Duensings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: duenna (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)-Vealhurl-duenna.wav.

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