guildmistress

plural guildmistresses

1. A female leader of a guild.

   Alabasel Frond was the guildmistress of the Adventurers Guild, and he had thought that her nickname was whispered only among the town’s youths.

   2017, Zack Loran Clark, Nick Eliopulos, The Adventurers Guild, Los Angeles, Calif.; New York, N.Y.: Disney • Hyperion, →ISBN, page 27

   2 more examples

   ‘How daintily is our Guildmistress appareled this day! Mark you the fair embroidery on her collar, and yon jewelled brooch she wears in it, as broad as the boss of a buckler!’

   1858, Frances M. Wilbraham, For and Against or Queen Margaret’s Badge: A Domestic Chronicle of the Fifteenth Century, volume I, London: John W. Parker and Son […], page 204

   Six weeks after I’d swum ashore, a full conclave of eight guildmistresses was held aboard a schooner out of Gate of the South; and I confessed in full all over again. This conclave spanned four full days. The guildmistresses were not so much sitting in judgement, but more as a tribunal of enquiry: to delve into all available facts about the other half of our world, facts which might cast a new light on what we thought of as the certainties of our existence.

   1984, Ian Watson, The Book of the River, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, published 1985, →ISBN, page 138