Word.ws English Dictionary

headmistressly

headmistressly adjective: befitting a headmistress.

Adjective

headmistressly (comparative more headmistressly, superlative most headmistressly)

  1. Befitting a headmistress.
    • They’d split a salad and even that they’d be careful not to finish: “We’ll each leave a leaf,” Edwige would whisper, tucking in her chin in a headmistressly way and looking at her friend over the tops of nonexistent glasses.1985, Edmund White, Caracole, New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton, →ISBN, page 197
    • Sarah’s half-moon reading spectacles gave her a headmistressly air, ‘. . . eyes of blue and very nice too.[…]’1991, Kate Fenton, Lions and Liquorice, Bath: Chivers Press; Thorndike, Me.: Thorndike Press, published 1996, →ISBN, page 354
    Synonyms:
    headmistressy

Synonyms of headmistressly

Forms of headmistressly

comparativemore headmistressly
superlativemost headmistressly

Origin of headmistressly

From headmistress + -ly.

Questions about headmistressly

What does headmistressly mean?
Headmistressly means befitting a headmistress.
What part of speech is headmistressly?
Headmistressly is an adjective.

Words near headmistressly in the dictionary

  1. headmen
  2. headmistress
  3. headmistress-ship
  4. headmistress-ships
  5. headmistresses
  6. headmistressly
  7. headmistressship
  8. headmistressships
  9. headmistressy
  10. headmold
  11. headmold-shot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headmistressly (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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