guildmistress

English

Etymology

From guild +‎ mistress.

Noun

guildmistress (plural guildmistresses)

1. A female leader of a guild.
   • 1858, Frances M. Wilbraham, For and Against or Queen Margaret’s Badge: A Domestic Chronicle of the Fifteenth Century, volume I, London: John W. Parker and Son […], page 204:

     ‘How daintily is our Guildmistress appareled this day! Mark you the fair embroidery on her collar, and yon jewelled brooch she wears in it, as broad as the boss of a buckler!’

   • 1984, Ian Watson, The Book of the River, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, published 1985, →ISBN, page 138:

     Six weeks after I’d swum ashore, a full conclave of eight guildmistresses was held aboard a schooner out of Gate of the South; and I confessed in full all over again. This conclave spanned four full days. The guildmistresses were not so much sitting in judgement, but more as a tribunal of enquiry: to delve into all available facts about the other half of our world, facts which might cast a new light on what we thought of as the certainties of our existence.

   • 2017, Zack Loran Clark, Nick Eliopulos, The Adventurers Guild, Los Angeles, Calif., New York, N.Y.: Disney • Hyperion, →ISBN, page 27:

     Alabasel Frond was the guildmistress of the Adventurers Guild, and he had thought that her nickname was whispered only among the town’s youths.

Coordinate terms

• guildmaster