Word.ws English Dictionary

leading lady

leading lady noun: a woman who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a woman who frequently plays such roles.

Noun

leading lady (plural leading ladies)

  1. A woman who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a woman who frequently plays such roles.
    • The leading lady also went out of her way to congratulate the young neophyte effusively on her triumph—and then slapped her unfortunate dresser on very insufficient provocation; […]1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  2. The type of conventionally beautiful and approachable woman who is perceived as being capable of playing female lead roles in movies or other productions.

Forms of leading lady

pluralleading ladies

Questions about leading lady

What does leading lady mean?
Leading lady means a woman who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a woman who frequently plays such roles.
What part of speech is leading lady?
Leading lady is a noun.
What is the plural of leading lady?
The plural of leading lady is leading ladies.

Words near leading lady in the dictionary

  1. leading hands
  2. leading in
  3. leading indicator
  4. leading indicators
  5. leading ladies
  6. leading lady
  7. leading light
  8. leading lights
  9. leading line
  10. leading lines
  11. leading man

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leading lady (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: “leading lady.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leading_lady. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.