A woman who practices usury, being the lending of money at excessively high rates of interest.
1631: Richard Brathwait, The English gentlewoman, p300
A religious divine comming to a certaine usuresse, … told her…
1658: Henry Hexham, Groot-Woorden-Boeck; a large Netherdutch and English dictionarie 1648, pUnknown
Een Woeckeresse, an Usuresse, or a woman Usurer.
1851: Emma Robinson, The gold-worshippers: or, The days we live in, p15 — [1]
“Tastes differs — I don’t think so, that’s all, mum”, replied the usuress, snappishly.
1862: Avery Newman, To parents and guardians, and others [verse] — Lines, suggested by the death of an eminent Lady, p65:v4 — [2]
Rest thee in peace, then, poor senseless cold clay;
Earth, the stern usuress, claims our fair forms,
Yet whilst with our dust life’s loan we repay,
Our soul’s hymn of praise to God’s will conforms.
1894: Wallace Martin Lindsay, The Latin Language: An Historical Account of Latin Sounds, Stems and Flexions, p42 — [3] & duplicated: [4]
…the Usuress, agrees with another remark of Varro…
1896 or 1846: Honoré de Balzac & Katharine Prescott Wormeley, La Comédie Humaine of Honoré de Balzac, p458 — [5]
“Yes; you shall see the usuress of rats, marcheuses and great ladies, — a woman who possesses more terrible secrets than there are gowns hanging in her window”, said Bixiou.
1898: The Daily Telegraph, 28th of May issue, p7, §3
The defendants … evinced no little hostility to the usuress.
1899: Friedrich Paulsen, A System of Ethics, p375 — [6]
Encouraged by such reflections, he kills an old repulsive usuress, in order to obtain money, but at the same time also to test his theory…
1907: Ford Madox Ford, The Fifth Queen, p246 — [7]
‘Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!’ he said. For it was in his mind a goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.
1931: Henry Baerlein, And Then to Transylvania, p110 — [8]
There was at Suceava a woman, the widow of a priest, called Gaina, and she was a usuress and she was demolished.
1938: University of North Carolina (1793–1962) Philological Club, Studies in Philology, p191 — [9]
That rara avis, “an usuress”, decides on her deathbed to risk hell rather than rob her children of their portion.
1945: Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar, p33 — [10]
An excitable young student kills a usuress with an axe…
1957: Robert Nigel Carew Hunt, The Theory and Practice of Communism: An Introduction, pp93 & 96 — [11]
{p93}Yet this he can have if he murders an old usuress who is detestable and a burden upon society. He murders her, but only to find himself caught up in something he had not foreseen…
{p96}…we have set out on a course which may lead us farther than we had intended, just as Raskolnikov, contrary to his intentions, had not only to kill the old usuress but also her good and innocent sister.
1957: Nathan A. Scott, Tragic Vision and the Christian Faith, p199 — [12]
She is, he has persuaded himself, a bloodsucking, tightfisted old usuress who does not deserve to live, a mere “louse”.
1958: Robert Graves, 5 Pens in Hand, pp198 & 199 — [13]
{p198}Mind, I know nothing, but they say . . . very unjustly no doubt . . . that the excellent woman was a receiver of stolen goods, a usuress at compound interest, a blackmailer, a Protestant!
{p199}No Catalan of the Costa Brava would murder even a supposed usuress for her money!
…do not associate with my landlady, who is a heartless usuress, or with the other lodgers, with whom I scarcely exchange a greeting when we meet on the stairs and whom I do not recognize when we run into one another…
1967: Pierre d’Harcourt, The Real Enemy, p96 — [16]
…the two young painters in Dostoievsky’s Crime and Punishment … did their work singing and whistling, while upstairs Raskolnikov killed the old usuress.
1968: Nathan A. Scott, Craters of the Spirit: Studies in the Modern Novel, p34 — [17]
She is, he has persuaded himself, a blood-sucking, tight-fisted old usuress who does not deserve to live, a mere “louse”.
1969: Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, The Dublin Review, p147 — [18]
He only wanted to kill an old usuress, a wicked and perfectly useless old woman.
The latter intimates that a certain usuress, Mme La Ressouce, will grant him a loan; he adds that Valère’s finacée, Angélique, weary of his gambling, is beginning to turn her attention to Dorante, who happens to be Valère’s uncle.
1985: Robert B. Pynsent, Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod : proceedings of a symposium held at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies 18–20 September 1984, p98 — [22]
We remember that, on Raskolnikov’s first visit, the usuress has well-pressed, slightly greying fair hair.
1994: Jelena O. Krstovic, Hispanic Literature Criticism, p1178 — [23]
…a harangue from the mouth of a fanatical student who comes armed with a bludgeon, consumed with hatred and resentment for an old usuress: the bludgeon, the posture, the crazed demeanor, the sick passions and demoniacal glint of the speaker’s eye will be what differentiate, once and for all, a merely theoretical premise from an overpowering concrete fact…
