milady

plural miladies · alternative m'lady

1. historicalhumorousAn English noblewoman or gentlewoman; the form of address to such a person; a lady.First known use 18th c.

present singular third person miladies · participle present miladying · participle past miladied · past miladied · participle past miladyed · past miladyed · alternative m'lady

1. To address as “milady”.

   With Czipra, tête-à-tête, he spoke also “per tu;” before others he miladyed her.

   1900, “Two Girls”, in Arthur B[attishill] Yolland, transl., Debts of Honor, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, translation of Mire megvénülünk by Maurus Jókai, page 225

   4 more examples

   It may be as well to warn travellers of certain suspicious, half-genteel-looking men, speaking bad English, and Miladying every female.

   1856 August 16, “Spa”, in The Illustrated London News, volume XXIX, number 816, London: William Little […], page 162, column 2

   To the ignorant Italians who milorded or miladied them, they were always anxious to explain that they “had no titles, and would be sorry to have any,”—that the members of the House of Lords were for the most part mere upstarts, and that the true nobility of England were the old land-owners,—the county families,—before whose names men only placed the plain Mr. and Mrs. by which they themselves, the Crawleys, preferred to be designated.

   1885, Antonio [Carlo Napoleone] Gallenga, “First Repentance. […]”, in Episodes of My Second Life. (American and English Experiences.), Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott & Co., page 275

   Within a space of twenty-four hours, I’ve gone from being “Miss Lattimar” to “Mrs Newell” to “Countess of Fensworth”. When the shopkeepers “miladyed” me this morning, I kept looking around to see which titled female had arrived.

   2019, Julia Justiss, The Earl’s Inconvenient Wife, Harlequin, →ISBN, chapter seventeen

   “He thinks of himself as an old-fashioned knight. Lots of chivalry. I will get miladyed to death. He will probably try to serenade me.”[…]Prepare to be good-sirred and miladyed to death, if not by Cedric, then by his parrot.

   2021, Lish McBride, Curses, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, pages 137 and 234