madonna

plural madonnas

1. Alternative letter-case form of Madonna.
   1. A representation of the Virgin Mary.

      When it has not whitened them, the church has attempted to assimilate dark or black madonnas; this is evident in the many Italian madonnas described as bruna.

      1993, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Black Madonnas: Feminism, Religion, and Politics in Italy, Northeastern University Press, →ISBN, page 32

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      Glogau Stat.—Inns: Deutsches Haus; Westphal’s Hotel. A fortress of the 2nd rank on the l. bank of the Oder, 17,000 Inhab. The Dom upon an island dates from 1120, and contains a madonna by Cranach, sen., his masterpiece.

      1868, “Sect VI.—Prussia, continued. Route 81”, in A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland. […], Sixteenth edition, London: John Murray, page 437

      Giacomo Medica’s (1965) sample of the 697 most important Marian sanctuaries in Italy gives us some idea of the number of Italian madonnas in Italy as a whole.

      1992, Michael P. Carroll, “The Mary Cult”, in Madonnas That Maim: Popular Catholicism in Italy since the Fifteenth Century, Baltimore, Md.; London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 62

      The darkening effects of being buried, especially outdoors, sounds plausible in a few such cases, but if candle smoke is to account for all the other dark madonnas, as the Church asserts, why would not the entire statue have become black?

      2004, Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re-Emergence in the Modern Church, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 231

   2. A morally pure woman.

      For centuries, madonnas provided legitimate children and social respectability; whores, illegitimate pleasure.

      1997, Teri Goodson, “A Prostitute Joins NOW”, in Jill Nagle, editor, Whores and Other Feminists, New York, N.Y.; London: Routledge, →ISBN, part 5 (Politics: Activism, Intervention, and Alliance), page 250

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      Yet most of us will probably deny that this blissful woman is a sexual woman. We associate her with Virgin Mary, who conceived in an act of spiritual purity and not in carnal lust and desire. We regard her chastity as essential to her maternal rectitude. Thus we hardly recognize the madonna's subtle sensuality as sexual energy, especially not in an age where we measure sexuality in orgasmic potency.

      1995, Merete Leonhardt-Lupa, “A Mother's Sexuality”, in A Mother Is Born: Preparing for Motherhood During Pregnancy, Westport, Conn.; London: Bergin & Garvey, →ISBN, page 113

      […] whether women’s liberation might be better achieved by rejecting the traditional dichotomization of women into good girls/bad girls, madonnas/whores, and hence refusing to organize one's sexual desire and pleasure in terms of the repressive and passive roles that are traditionally ascribed to female sexuality within dominant discourses (the so-called ‘agency’ model).

      2004, Elaine Jeffreys, “Feminist prostitution debates and responses”, in China, Sex and Prostitution (RoutledgeCurzon Studies on China in Transition), London; New York, N.Y.: RoutledgeCurzon, →ISBN, section “The development of theoretical approaches”, page 75

   3. A lady.

      A Hollywood madonna […] “Gentlemen: This is my Christmas madonna …”

      1960 December, Skulda V. Baner, “A Hollywood madonna”, in American Girl, volume XLIII, number 12, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., page 42

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      […] hee lay laſt night in ſuch a madonnas chamber, tother night he lay in ſuch a Counteſſes couch, to night he lies in ſuch a Ladies cloſet, […]

      1604 (date written), Iohn Marston [i.e., John Marston], Parasitaster, or The Fawne, […], 2nd edition, London: […] T[homas] P[urfoot] for W[illiam] C[otton], published 1606, →OCLC, Act III, scene i

plural madonnas

1. hobbiesA one-footed lien-to-tail trick, where the front foot is taken off and kicked out straight down behind the board.

plural Madonnas · alternative obsolete Madona

1. sometimeswith definite articleChristianitySynonym of Mary, mother of Jesus, especially in Catholic contexts.

   Synonyms: Mary, mother of Jesus

2. A female given name from Italian.

   We feel bound to add, however, that it is not very likely, in the usual chances of events, that such names as Alaric Attila Watts should have met in matrimony with those of Zillah Madonna Wiffen; and an unkind world may suggest a mystification somewhere.

   1835 June, Fraser's Magazine, volume XI, page 652

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   But celebrities actually have a weak effect on baby names. As of 2000, the pop star Madonna had sold 130 million records worldwide but hadn't generated even the ten copycat namings―in California, no less―required to make the master index of four thousand names from which the sprawling list of girls' names on page 227 was drawn.

   2005, Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics, Allen Lane, published 2005, →ISBN, page 184

   MADONNA(S) Yes. (They look at each other with surprise. The room goes silent.) MR. STEIN Two Madonnas? (Pause.) MR. STEIN Did either of you know God? EIGHTIES MADONNA I knew of Him. BIBLICAL MADONNA We had a Son together. MR. STEIN […] I’m going to have to ask you to leave. (The eighties Madonna gets up with a smile and then without uttering another word flounces out of the room loudly humming the tune ‘Like a Virgin’.)

   2013 February, Alan Baggett, God’s Will, →ISBN, page 39

plural Madonnas · alternative madonna · alternative obsolete Madona

1. An artistic representation of the Virgin Mary, chiefly when holding the infant Jesus.

   A beautiful example of this type of Madonna is the polyptych in the Museo Civico in Sansepolcro.

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   So many Madonnas were produced during the Renaissance that it became the habit to distinguish them by any peculiarity.

   1913, “Art Galleries of Florence”, in The World’s Progress: With Illustrative Texts from Masterpieces of Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Modern European and American Literature, Fully Illustrated, volume IX, Chicago, Ill.: The Delphian Society, page 114

2. A morally pure woman.

   “Men,” I said, with a tone of disgust. “Halal circles, haram circles, good, bad, Madonnas, whores, goats, penises, it’s all the same.”

   2000, Deborah Copaken Kogan, Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, Villard Books, →ISBN, page 52

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   […] the mothers who, like Sebastian’s mother in Notorious or Mitch’s mother Lydia in The Birds, block such a transference, or by potential love-objects who are, themselves, Madonnas, whores, or otherwise thinly disguised maternal figures.

   2008, Paul Gordon, Dial “M” for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, →ISBN, page 205

   The Madonnas are the mothers to our children, the pillars of our families, and the goddesses of our communities. The Madonnas shun the dark side of human sexuality and banish the whores to hell. We put the Madonnas on a pedestal, and we can’t think of them as being sexual or sexy because they must be pure. They must be virginal like the Madonna herself.

   2008, Maureen Canning, Lust, Anger, Love: Understanding Sexual Addiction and the Road to Healthy Intimacy, Sourcebooks, Inc., →ISBN, page 182

   Sparing no one in her response to her interviewer’s questions about the ERA, she alludes to divisions within the women’s movement, referring to the factions as “Madonnas, whores, housewives, and lesbians.”

   2013, Devorah Heitner, Black Power TV, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 79

   In sexual politics the view of women as either Madonnas or whores limits women’s sexual expression, offering two mutually exclusive ways to construct a sexual identity.

   2019, Chris Kelly, Carmen Hahn, Clinical Psychology, ED-Tech Press, published 2020, →ISBN, page 129