Word.ws English Dictionary

portess

portess is the obsolete form of portass.

Meaning of portass

Noun

portass (plural portasses)

  1. (Early, Modern, obsolete) A breviary; a prayer book.
    • an old Priest in that age, which always read in his Portass, Mumpsimus Domine for Sumpsimus; whereof when he was admonished, he said that he now had used Mumpsimus thirty years, and would not leave his old Mumpsimus for their new Sumpsimus.1605, M. N. [pseudonym; William Camden], Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, […], London: […] G[eorge] E[ld] for Simon Waterson, →OCLC

Forms of portess

pluralportesses

Questions about portess

What is portess the obsolete form of?
Portess is the obsolete form of portass.

Words near portess in the dictionary

  1. porterweed
  2. porterweeds
  3. Portes
  4. Porteses
  5. Portesham
  6. portess
  7. portesse
  8. portesses
  9. Portessie
  10. Porteus
  11. Porteño

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portess (page history and authors); portass (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: “portess.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/portess. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.