Word.ws English Dictionary

hetairia

hetairia is the alternative form of hetaera.

Meaning of hetaera

Noun

hetaera (plural hetaerae or hetaeras)

  1. (historical, Ancient Greece) A highly cultivated hired female companion who would entertain upper-class male clients and might perform sex acts for them.
    • But of course our friend is only a shallow twentieth-century reproduction of the great hetairae of the past, the type to which she belongs without knowing it, Lais, Charis and the rest...1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine
  2. A mistress.
    • Woman is dethroned as the primary and supreme sex, debased into inseminable hetaera.1971, Gottfried Benn, E. B. Ashton, Primal vision: selected writings

Forms of hetairia

pluralhetairiae
pluralhetairias

Questions about hetairia

What is hetairia the alternative form of?
Hetairia is the alternative form of hetaera.

Words near hetairia in the dictionary

  1. hetairai
  2. hetairas
  3. hetaireia
  4. hetaireiai
  5. hetaireias
  6. hetairia
  7. hetairiae
  8. hetairias
  9. hetairic
  10. hetairism
  11. hetairist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hetairia (page history and authors); hetaera (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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Cite this entry: “hetairia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hetairia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.