heroine
nounadjectivenouncommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ˈhɛɹəʊɪn//
- Canada//ˈhɪɹoʊɪn//
- Canada//ˈhɛɹoʊɪn//
- //hiro.ɪn//
A female hero.
noun
- 1
A female hero.
- 2
A female lead character.
Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.
'I infer that you are the lady of the paragraph,' and the lifted hand indicated the open sheet of the Record lying nearby. […] 'Oh,' said Mr Carrados with an amused and deepening interest, 'so in addition to being the heroine of the adventure you wrote it up?'
Etymology
From Latin hērōīna, from late Ancient Greek ἡρωΐνη (hērōḯnē) (2nd century), a feminine equivalent of ἥρως (hḗrōs, “hero, demigod”), equivalent to hero + -ine (suffix forming feminine nouns). * English from 1587. The sense of "female lead character" is from 1715.
adjective
- 1
rareCharacteristic of a heroine; heroic.
Her Brows ſoft Fur was of a paler Dye, / Conformable to that which prettily / Peep’d on her upper Lip, and cowardly / Made shew of Heroine Virility.
How otherwise than by a violation of a pledge could he have conquered Limerick, protected as it then was by the heroine bravery of its defenders.
Etymology
Partly from the noun and partly from hero + -ine (suffix forming adjectives).
noun
- 1
Variant of heroinobsoleteObsolete spelling of heroin.
[…] 1,451 ounces of heroine hydrochloride, and 19 ounces of codeine — the equivalent of 16,273 pounds of opium.
No manufacture of heroine is lawful in the United States of America, but it is permitted in some countries under the same conditions as for other narcotics under international control.
Forms
- plural
- heroines