dictatrix

plural dictatrices

1. A female dictator.

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

   2011, Joanna Lumley, Absolutely,, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, page 141

   4 more examples

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

   1849, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, chapter 3, in The Caxtons, volume 1, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 70

   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.

   1871, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 32, in My Wife and I, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, page 340

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

   1937, Caroline Gordon, chapter 11, in The Garden of Adonis, New York: Cooper Square Publishers, published 1971, page 131

   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.

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

   Synonyms: dictatress

2. archaicA dictatorial entity personified as female; that which dictates.

   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?

   1 more example

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

   1648, Jeremy Taylor, Treatises […] together with a sermon, London: R. Royston, dedicatory epistle, page 42

   Synonyms: dictatress