oratoress

oratoress (plural oratoresses)

1. Alternative form of oratress
   • 1662, [Margaret Cavendish,] the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle, Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places, London, page 231:

     The former Oratoress’s Oration or Speech was to Perswade us Out of our Selves, as to be That, which Nature never Intended us to be, to wit Masculine; but why should we Desire to be Masculine, since our Own Sex and Condition is far the Better?

   • 1837, C. H., “The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies; Hero and Leander; Lycus the Centaur; and other Poems. By Thomas Hood. National Tales. By Thomas Hood. The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer. By Thomas Hood; Tylney Hall. By Thomas Hood. Whims and Oddities, in Prose and Verse. By Thomas Hood. Hood’s Own, or Laughter from Year to Year. ”, in The London and Westminster Review, London: Henry Hooper, page 139:

     […];—these, with many others, make up a group of female curiosities only to be equalled by their creator’s own Winter Nosegay (a sketch with the heads of ancient ladies in place of flowers), or his “Elland Meeting” (in the most recent number of ‘Hood’s Own’), where figure among the oratoresses and the eager audience, physiognomies worthy of Hogarth himself.

   • 1934 October 10, “Clipped Comment”, in The Morning Chronicle, volume XIV, number 185, Manhattan, Kan., page four:

     Miss Ann Laughlin, the fiery democratic oratoress who is the Mary Ellen Lease of the present campaign says: “I would prefer to go to the grave an old maid than marry a G. O. P.”

• sororates