Dictionary

preceptress en · NOUN

Etymology

From preceptor + -ess.

Meanings

1. (archaic) A female preceptor, or provider of moral instruction; a teacher.
   • She was my sister, my preceptress and friend; but she died--her end was violent, untimely, and criminal! 1889, Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn:
   • ‘I daily became more amiable, and might perhaps by this time have nearly attained perfection, had not my Preceptoress been torn from my arms, e'er I had attained by seventeenth year.’ 1790, Jane Austen, “Jack and Alice”, in Juvenilia:
   • Her preceptress had never found it necessary to repeat an admonition of any kind, since her arrival at years to discriminate between the right and the wrong. 1852, James Fenimore Cooper, Precaution:
   • She had married late in life, having been previously a preceptress in a young ladies' school. 1896, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Madelon:

Forms