dictatrix

Latin dictatrix

dictatrix (plural dictatrices)

1. A female dictator.
   • 1849, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Caxtons, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 70,

     Our principal domestic, in dignity and station, was Mrs Primmins, who was waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper, and tyrannical dictatrix of the whole establishment.

   • 1871, Harriet Beecher Stowe, My Wife and I, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Chapter 32, p. 340,

     Prudent mammas were generally of opinion that the height of felicity for a daughter would be the position that should enable her to be the mistress and dictatrix of his ample fortune.

   • 1937, Caroline Gordon, The Garden of Adonis, New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1971, Chapter 11, p. 131,

     There is a young lady who is dictatrix—social dictatrix of Countsville. They run wherever she leads them.

   • 1995 January, Thomas M. Disch, “The Lipstick on the Mirror”, in Poetry, page 192:

     the face of the distant / Sovereign began to melt and coalesce / With the faces of all women fair and rich: / Movie starlets, heiresses, cruel / Dictatrices, anchorwomen, teen murderesses / Able to sell their tales to Hollywood.

   • 2011, Joanna Lumley, Absolutely, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 141,

     My part was Miralda Sumac, a murderous dictatrix who comes to a bad end.

2. (archaic) A dictatorial entity personified as female; that which dictates.
   • 1648, Jeremy Taylor, Treatises […] together with a sermon, London: R. Royston, dedicatory epistle, p. 42,

     the Church of Rome which is the great dictatrix of dogmaticall resolutions, and the declarer of Heresy

   • 1756, George Anderson, A Remonstrance against Lord Bolingbroke’s Philosophical Religion cited in a review in The Monthly Review, Volume 16, 1757, p. 240,

     […] how can you […] plead a religious conscience as a dictatrix of what is morally good and evil, when you deny God’s moral attributes?

• dictatress

From dictātor (“chief magistrate”); from dictō (“dictate, prescribe”) +‎ -trīx, from dīcō (“say, speak”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /dikˈtaː.triːks/, [d̪ɪkˈt̪äːt̪riːks̠]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /dikˈta.triks/, [d̪ikˈt̪äːt̪riks]

dictātrīx f (genitive dictātrīcis); third declension

1. (humorous) woman in charge
   • c.205-184 B.C.E., Titus Maccius Plautus Persa, act v, scene 1

     Do hanc tibi florentem florenti: tu
     hic eris dictatrix nobis.

Third-declension noun.

• “dictatrix”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• dictatrix in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette