school-marm

Noun

schoolmarm (plural schoolmarms)

1. (US, slang) A female teacher, especially one seen to be old-fashioned and extremely severe and strict.
   • The schoolmarm came to an abrupt stop in her arithmetic quizzing, her face set into a pruny scowl that looked to be permanent.2013, Josh Rountree, Lon Prater, Alamo Rising
2. (broadly) Someone who acts like a schoolmarm, especially in being stern and prissy.
   • Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced hypocrite? Am I a New England school marm?1941, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (motion picture), spoken by Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), RKO Radio Pictures
3. A tree with two or more trunks; a forked tree.
   • His brother Thomas, impaled upon the "schoolmarm tree," had opened his mouth to cry but snow and wind hurled back the words into his throat so that nothing emerges but white froth.1939, Howard O'Hagan, Tay John, McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page VIII

See all 4 meanings of schoolmarm