heiress apparent

See also: heiress-apparent

English

Alternative forms

• heiress-apparent

Noun

heiress apparent (plural heiresses apparent)

1. A female heir apparent.

   Coordinate term: heiress presumptive

   • 1851, [Rosina] Bulwer Lytton, chapter IV, in Miriam Sedley; or, The Tares and the Wheat. A Tale of Real Life., volume III, London: W[illiam] Shoberl, […], pages 140–141:

     “Dear me!” said I, “what a sweeping charge of folly you are bringing against nearly the whole sex, which, after all, is only another version of what I said, namely, that women were great fools to marry. I have no doubt there are exceptions, and that the poor Princess Charlotte, for instance, found a husband the most docile, irreproachable, and obedient of created beings, and that all heiresses apparent to thrones will do the same; […]”

   • 1861, G. Fort, “Our First Newspaper”, in We Four Villagers. A Tale of Domestic Life in Pennsylvania., Philadelphia, Pa.: J. S. McCalla, […], page 60:

     Marry money, thought I to myself, who will he marry? then in my own mind I made a review of all the marriageable heiresses, and heiresses apparent, not only in Silveryville, but likewise, in a circuit several miles around it, and I could not find one among them all, who was not already engaged to be married to somebody else.

   • 2022, J[ames] Bradford DeLong, “Notes”, in Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, published 2023, →ISBN, note 25:

     Consider that one in seven of the queens and heiresses apparent of England between William I of Normandy and Victoria of Hanover died in childbed.

References

• “heiress apparent”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.