Word.ws English Dictionary

finishing school

finishing school noun: a private school intended to furnish young women with the social skills and cultural education needed in order to fulfill successfully a woman's traditional role in polite society.

Noun

finishing school (plural finishing schools)

  1. (dated) A private school intended to furnish young women with the social skills and cultural education needed in order to fulfill successfully a woman's traditional role in polite society.
    • "All she needs is a year or two at a fashionable finishing school, so that at eighteen she can come out with éclat," put in Aunt Clara.1875, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 4, in Eight Cousins
    • Until the 1920s, most European high schools for girls were finishing schools.1998, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Nobel Prize Women in Science, Carol Publishing Group, page 3
    Synonyms:
    charm school

Synonyms of finishing school

Forms of finishing school

pluralfinishing schools
alternative formfinishing-school

Questions about finishing school

What does finishing school mean?
Finishing school means a private school intended to furnish young women with the social skills and cultural education needed in order to fulfill successfully a woman's traditional role in polite society.
What part of speech is finishing school?
Finishing school is a noun.
What is the plural of finishing school?
The plural of finishing school is finishing schools.

Words near finishing school in the dictionary

  1. finishing lines
  2. finishing move
  3. finishing moves
  4. finishing off
  5. finishing out
  6. finishing school
  7. finishing schools
  8. finishing touch
  9. finishing touches
  10. finishing up
  11. finishing with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: finishing school (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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