pythoness
pythoness noun: a female soothsayer. Also the alternative letter-case form of Pythoness.
Noun (1)
pythoness (plural pythonesses)
- A female soothsayer
Noun (2)
pythoness (plural pythonesses)
- A female python.
- On the fifteenth of January, it was discovered that the pythoness had excluded rather more than a hundred dirty-white, leathery-looking eggs.1862, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume 56
Noun (3) capitalized: Pythoness
Pythoness (plural Pythonesses)
- The priestess of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi.
- The office of Pythoness appears not to have been desirable. Either the emanations from the cavern, or some art of the managers, threw her into real convulsions. Priests entitled prophets led her to the sacred tripod, force being often necessary for that purpose, and held her on it till her frenzy...1784, William Mitford, The History of Greece, volume 1
- The unconnected words which the Pythoness screamed out in her madness were arranged into sentences by the attendant priests, who could easily place them in such an order, and fill up the breaks in such a way, as to make them express whatever was most suitable to the interests of the shrine, which...1857, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers's Information for the People
- Synonyms:
- Pythia
Also used as
pythoness is also the alternative letter-case form of Pythoness.
Synonyms of pythoness
Forms of pythoness
| plural | pythonesses |
|---|---|
| plural | Pythonesses |
Origin of pythoness
See Pythoness.
From python + -ess.
From Late Latin pythonissa, from Ancient Greek Πυθία (Puthía). Compare Pythia.
Questions about pythoness
- What does pythoness mean?
- Pythoness means a female soothsayer.
- What part of speech is pythoness?
- Pythoness is a noun.
- What is the plural of pythoness?
- The plural of pythoness is pythonesses.
Words near pythoness in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pythoness (page history and authors); Pythoness (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: “pythoness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pythoness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.