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priestess

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈpriːstɛs//
  • United States//ˈpristɪs//

A woman with religious duties and responsibilities in certain religions.

noun

  1. 1

    A woman with religious duties and responsibilities in certain religions.

  2. 2

    A female Christian priest or minister, typically in a Protestant, Old Catholic, or independent Catholic denomination.

    The “extenuating circumstances” set forth by the Rev. Mr. Higgins certainly bring home not only the nature of Bishop Hall's problem but its cause; however, the problems of parish life under a deaconess are insignificant in comparison with the very grave issues raised by the ordination of a priestess.

    [object Object]

    He has cleverly figured out that the deluded pro-priestess faction of the church already has its necessary two-thirds majority and that the time to act is now.

    THE Church of England is considering taking legal action against a recalcitrant opponent of women priests in Hull who refuses to take down a church sign which says: "This Anglican parish has no part in the apostasy of priestesses."

  3. 3

    obsoleteA priest’s wife.

    As ſoon as they were parted, the Prieſteſs flounced out of the Houſe, call'd for her Coachman, and bid him put in his Horſes, for away would ſhe go […]

Etymology

From priest + -ess. Compare Middle English preesteresse (“priestess”). Piecewise doublet of presbyteress.

verb

  1. 1

    To oversee (a pagan ceremony, etc.) as priestess.

    Ye Ye Ife, a gifted feminist ritualist and priestess of Oshun from San Diego, trained in the Yoruba tradition, designed and priestessed the ritual with me.

    Priestessing the earth is for me personally the only natural response to the awe and deep love this evokes in me.

    I priestessed the ceremony. I played Hecate. One time I played Demeter and my daughter played Persephone.

Forms

plural
priestesses
past tense
priestessed
past participle
priestessed
present participle
priestessing
third person singular
priestesses
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).