Word.ws English Dictionary

schoolmarm

US/ˈskulˌmɑɹm/

schoolmarm noun: a female teacher, especially one seen to be old-fashioned and extremely severe and strict.

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
    • I never thought of [my granfather] as "colorful." Matter of fact, he was an unsavory old coot - not a good influence for a growing boy by the standards of those times. Mmm, there was something about a young schoolmarm and him in the town my family had lived in, some scandal - "scandal" for those...1972, Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
  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

Verb

schoolmarm (third-person singular simple present schoolmarms, present participle schoolmarming, simple past and past participle schoolmarmed)

  1. (US, slang, transitive) To discipline in the manner of a schoolmarm; to harshly reprimand or chide.
    • Well, our trouble in America is that we're being schoolmarmed to death. You can see it in any paper you pick up.1914, The Cosmopolitan, volume 56, Schlicht & Field, page 458
    • One client, the most mothering member of the group, did exactly that: she took him home, fed him, and schoolmarmed him through the application form.2008, Irvin D. Yalom, Molyn Leszcz, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Basic Books, →ISBN

Forms of schoolmarm

Noun
pluralschoolmarms
alternative formschool marm
alternative formschool-marm
Verb
third-person singular presentschoolmarms
present participleschoolmarming
past participleschoolmarmed
pastschoolmarmed

Origin of schoolmarm

From school + marm (“madam”).

Questions about schoolmarm

What does schoolmarm mean?
Schoolmarm means a female teacher, especially one seen to be old-fashioned and extremely severe and strict.
What part of speech is schoolmarm?
Schoolmarm can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce schoolmarm?
Schoolmarm is pronounced /ˈskulˌmɑɹm/ (US).
What is the plural of schoolmarm?
The plural of schoolmarm is schoolmarms.

Words near schoolmarm in the dictionary

  1. schoolma'amish
  2. schoolma'ams
  3. schoolmaid
  4. schoolmaids
  5. schoolman
  6. schoolmarm
  7. schoolmarmed
  8. schoolmarming
  9. schoolmarmish
  10. schoolmarmishly
  11. schoolmarmishness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schoolmarm (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-schoolmarm.ogg.

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