Word.ws English Dictionary

mistressly

mistressly adjective: pertaining to the mistress of a home or household.

Adjective

mistressly (comparative more mistressly, superlative most mistressly)

  1. (obsolete, rare) Pertaining to the mistress of a home or household.
    • Will he take from me the mistressly management, which I had not faultily discharged?1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XL”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by John Osborn, […]...
  2. (archaic) Characteristic of a woman who is very proficient in some skill or activity; masterful.

Forms of mistressly

comparativemore mistressly
superlativemost mistressly

Origin of mistressly

From mistress + -ly.

Questions about mistressly

What does mistressly mean?
Mistressly means pertaining to the mistress of a home or household.
What part of speech is mistressly?
Mistressly is an adjective.

Words near mistressly in the dictionary

  1. mistresses
  2. mistresses of the robes
  3. mistresshood
  4. mistressing
  5. mistressless
  6. mistressly
  7. mistressmind
  8. mistressminded
  9. mistressminding
  10. mistressminds
  11. mistresspiece

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mistressly (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “mistressly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mistressly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.