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GOVERNESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A woman entrusted with the care and supervision of a child (especially in a private home)
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("governess" is a kind of...):
instructor; teacher (a person whose occupation is teaching)
Context examples:
She had called on her former governess, and had heard from her of there being an old school-fellow in Bath, who had the two strong claims on her attention of past kindness and present suffering.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
And Miss Kate strolled away, adding to herself with a shrug, I didn't come to chaperone a governess, though she is young and pretty.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
“Every minute she gets stronger,” said Holmes, glancing at the governess.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Jane actually on the point of going as governess!
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage one.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
At Ecclesford the governess was to have done it.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
And a governess?
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There is a well-known agency for governesses in the West End called Westaway’s, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
