Word.ws English Dictionary

harridan

UK/ˈhæɹ.ɪ.dən//ˈhæɹ.ɪ.dən/

harridan noun: a vicious and scolding woman, especially an older one.

harridan: person in red and white mask
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Noun

harridan (plural harridans)

  1. A vicious and scolding woman, especially an older one.
    • Why is that tattling old harridan, Peggy O'Dowd, to make free with my name at her d—d supper-table, and advertise my engagement over the three kingdoms?1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 13, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • Well there was one old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her attention to me.1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 37

harridan meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

harridan in Bengali

বৃদ্ধ ও বিরক্তিকর মহিলা

harridan in Malayalam

virago, shrew, termagant
ശുണ്ഠിക്കാരിയായ വൃദ്ധ, ശണ്ഠക്കാരി, വഴക്കാളി, ശുണ്ഠിക്കാരത്തി, കർക്കശ, കർക്കശക്കാരി

Synonyms of harridan

12 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of harridan

Forms of harridan

pluralharridans

Origin of harridan

Perhaps a modification of French haridelle (“old horse, nag”).

Questions about harridan

What does harridan mean?
Harridan means a vicious and scolding woman, especially an older one.
What is harridan in Bengali?
Harridan in Bengali is বৃদ্ধ ও বিরক্তিকর মহিলা. See Harridan meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is harridan?
Harridan is a noun.
How do you pronounce harridan?
Harridan is pronounced /ˈhæɹ.ɪ.dən/ (UK).
What is the plural of harridan?
The plural of harridan is harridans.

Words near harridan in the dictionary

  1. Harres
  2. Harreses
  3. Harrhy
  4. harricane
  5. harricanes
  6. harridan
  7. harridans
  8. Harridge
  9. Harridges
  10. Harrie
  11. harried

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harridan (page history and authors); harridan (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); harridan (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Cite this entry: “harridan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/harridan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.