frau

plural fraus

1. A woman, especially a German woman.

   Witch: / Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! / You damned old beast! You cursed old sow! / You leave the kettle and singe the frau.

   1961, Goethe, translated by Walter Kaufman, Faust, line 2465

   2 more examples

   To Germantown, Pa., the German frauen carried their domestic industry of the hand knitting of woolen hose, and before 1775 there were one hundred and fifty knitting frames at Germantown and in the vicinity of the Brandywine; […]

   1911, John Howard Brown, E[dith] M[ary] Norris, editors, Lamb’s Textile Industries of the United States: Embracing Biographical Sketches of Prominment Men and a Historical Resumé of the Progress of Textile Manufacture from the Earliest Records to the Present Time, volume I, Boston, Mass.: James H. Lamb Company, page 149

   It presents Dürer’s mother as a sharp-nosed, world-weary German frau looking wryly out at life from under a decorous wimple.

   2007 January 12, Grace Glueck, “Fun With Studio Crafts: When the Traditional Gets Quirky”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2019

plural Frauen · plural Fraus

1. slightly datedUsed as a courtesy title before the surname of a (typically married) German-speaking woman.

   We met our landlords-to-be, Frau and Herr Friedrich, themselves émigrés from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

   2015, Joel M. Levin, Our Beguine: The Dance of Life, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   G. von Hoffmann’s Die Ochsenmenuette offered Frau von Berckel as Therese, Scherer as Istock, Lotti as Eduard, and Frauen Schmidt and Esden, and Graff, Lehmann and Kress in minor rôles.

   1970, George C[linton] D[ensmore] Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, New York, N.Y.: AMS Press, page 169

   His gifts as an impassioned speaker had brought him to the notice of some wealthy society ladies (Frauen Bechstein, Hofmann and Wagner), who lionised him and tolerated his cranky behaviour as that of a budding genius.

   2002, Margaret Cook, “The Military Celibate”, in Lords of Creation: The Demented World of Men in Power, London: Robson Books, →ISBN, page 101

   There was more than a little rivalry between the two ladies, Frauen Wagner and Bechstein, when it came to offering Wolf accommodation, though Winnie could see that while she was so busy with the Festival it made sense for Wolf to stay with the Bechsteins and come round to Wahnfried for visits.

   2007, A[ndrew] N[orman] Wilson, Winnie and Wolf, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 54

   Synonyms: Fr.