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matrician

matrician noun: a female patrician; an upper class matriarch.

Noun (1)

matrician (plural matricians)

  1. A female patrician; an upper class matriarch
    • In the present state of society we need not go far to find many a man who would give all the waltzes and polkas that a matrician genius ever invented, and throw all the new-fangled flourishes upon piano and guitar into the bargain, for healthful breakfasts [...]1854, The Model Housekeeper, The Friend, page 358
    • Instead, Bettina traces her lineage through "Foremother," whose oil portrait watches over the homestead; she is described as a "matrician" who "in life as in the portrait, . . . approved of nothing"1992, Barbara Jean Monroe, Mother wit: American women's literary humor
  2. A group or clan claiming matrilineal descent from a (usually legendary) female ancestor
    • The society consists of a number of matricians which, as each is exogamous, are linked together by ties of kinship and marriage. This sort of society is very common throughout the islands off the mainland.1967, New Guinea and Australia, the Pacific and South-east Asia
    • However, the household was controlled by its senior women; because of the residence pattern, the men were unrelated outsiders who belonged to different matricians.1981, Roger M. Keesing, Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, Holt McDougal

Adjective (1)

matrician (comparative more matrician, superlative most matrician)

  1. Upper class and matriarchal
    • Forfend that her stern shade ever resent a comparison with such frail creatures ! She carries the historic ' prowde countenance of the Geraldines ' of her day. Aristocratic, matrician, and placid, though deeply traced with sorrow1853, The Quarterly Review, page 353
    • Her father is a successful businessman and her rather forceful mother a philosophy don; and Florence's life in a matrician and intellectual North Oxford household - you feel sure it's in one of those substantial brick crescents next to the Parks - is vivid in its intricate particularity.2007, John Lehmann, Alan Ross, London Magazine

Noun (2)

matrician (plural matricians)

  1. A mathematician who studies matrices
    • It is quite apparent why a matrician missed this generalization, because his creed is to build from low-order matrices high-order arrays.1940, Electrical Engineering
    • The study of the pencil is helpful not only to matricians for a more efficient calculation of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors, but also to control theorists for the analysis and design of their control systems.2007, Ky M. Vu, The ARIMA and VARIMA Time Series: Their Modelings, Analyses and Applications, AuLac Technologies Inc., →ISBN, page 462

Adjective (2)

matrician (not comparable)

  1. Pertaining to matrices
    • For the j-circle method a convenient and comprehensive book is that by Kuske where the interested reader will find all the detail but it is not presented with a matrician calculus.1979, G. S. Holister, Developments in Stress Analysis--1, Elsevier Science & Technology
    • A matrician method (method of nodal displacement) allows to obtain directly the stiffness matrix and the center of motion.1983, Brian Rooks, Developments in Robotics, 1983, →ISBN

Examples of matrician in a sentence

  • In order of rank, the matricians were the pig, dog, snake, and iguana clans.1982, Ron E. Roberts, Douglas E. Brintnall, Reinventing inequality: an inquiry into society and stratification, Schenkman Books:
  • Just as Connie had told him, she was immediately reigning over everything with matrician authority.2012, Meagan McKinney, The Lawman Meets His Bride, Harlequin, →ISBN:

Forms of matrician

Noun
pluralmatricians
Adjective
comparativemore matrician
superlativemost matrician

Origin of matrician

By analogy with patrician

From matrix + -ian.

Questions about matrician

What does matrician mean?
Matrician means a female patrician; an upper class matriarch.
How do you use matrician in a sentence?
In order of rank, the matricians were the pig, dog, snake, and iguana clans.
What part of speech is matrician?
Matrician can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of matrician?
The plural of matrician is matricians.

Words near matrician in the dictionary

  1. matricentric
  2. matricentrically
  3. matricentricity
  4. matrices
  5. matricial
  6. matrician
  7. matricians
  8. matricidal
  9. matricidally
  10. matricide
  11. matricides

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: matrician (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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