electress

plural electresses · alternative electoress · alternative electrix

1. datedrareA woman who can vote in an election.First known use 17th c.

   I often wish I were, not a butterfly nor a bird—nothing so ridiculous—but an Electress!

   1868 May 23, Punch, page 228

   2 more examples

   Free and independent electresses might object to be set in the forefront of the battle to shield their husbands and brothers from consabulary buckshot.

   1881 November 12, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, page 603

   To be an electress is the greatest honour imaginable; and to be the husband of an electress—why, it doubles a man's income at once.

   1907, “Women's rights in realms afar”, in The Fortnightly, volume 82, page 419

2. historicalThe wife of a German elector, often used as a title.First known use 17th c.

   The Electress Magdalena Sybilla was a woman of character, virtuous, kind, conventional and managing.

   1938, CV Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War, page 63

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   Nothing could equal the astonishment of both, on hearing the door open without their command, and seeing the electress enter, who was the person in the world they least expected, and to the duchess, perhaps, the least welcome.

   1773, The Literary Register: Or, Weekly Miscellany, volume 5, page 177

   In July 1697 Electress Sophie had given an informal party for Peter which was attended only by her immediate family and the electresses of Brunswick and Hanover.

   1971, James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great, page 31

   On Sunday 13 June the electress attended mass at the Santo and visited the relics of the saint, on which occasion Guadagni sang, as usual, Vallotti's antiphon 'O linque benedicta'; in the evening she was entertained at an accademia di musica in the Giustinian palalace, where Guadagni is numbered among the performers; the following evening she heard him again in a performance of her own short opera, Il trionfo della fedeltà (first performed in Dresden, 1754) at the Palazzo Dondi Orologio.

   2014, Patricia Howard, The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age