Mistress

How to spell mistress

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mistress

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mistress mean?

1. nounA woman who is in an ongoing romantic or sexual relationship with a man who is married to someone else.
2. nounA woman who has authority, control, or ownership over a household, servants, or an animal.
3. nounA female schoolteacher, especially one responsible for a particular subject or class.

Mistress in a sentence

• The tabloid claimed the politician had kept a mistress for years.

• The loyal dog returned to its mistress the moment she whistled.

• The games mistress organised the netball fixtures each term.

• His wife discovered the affair when she found letters from his mistress.

• As mistress of the grand estate, she managed a staff of twenty.

• Pupils respected the strict French mistress who marked every essay.

Where does mistress come from?

Language of origin: French

This word arrived in English in the 1300s from Old French maistresse, the feminine counterpart of maistre, meaning 'master'. That French word traces back to the Latin magister, which literally meant 'chief' or 'one who is greater', and which also gave us 'magistrate' and 'master' itself. The earliest English sense simply marked a woman in charge: the female head of a household, an employer of servants, or a woman with command over something. From there the meaning branched, producing both the respectful 'schoolmistress' and the sense of a woman engaged in a relationship with a married man. The spelling preserves the buried 'master' inside it, with the 't' and 'r' sitting together exactly as they do in 'master', which is a useful anchor: think 'mistr-' plus the feminine '-ess' ending, not '-iss'.

How the word is built

• mistr- (feminine form of 'master', from Latin magister: chief, teacher)
• -ess (feminine noun suffix)