preceptress

English

Alternative forms

• preceptoress

Etymology

From preceptor +‎ -ess.

Noun

preceptress (plural preceptresses)

1. (now rare) A female preceptor, or provider of moral instruction; a teacher. [from 18th c.]
   • 1790, Jane Austen, “Jack and Alice”, in Juvenilia:

     ‘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.’

   • 1852, James Fenimore Cooper, Precaution‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 1889, Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn‎^[2]:

     She was my sister, my preceptress and friend; but she died--her end was violent, untimely, and criminal!

   • 1896, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Madelon‎^[3]:

     She had married late in life, having been previously a preceptress in a young ladies' school.