ministrix
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Etymology: Learned borrowing from Latin ministrīx. By surface analysis, minister + -trix.
Senses: examples: text: Regarding The Veterinarian as the organ of neither individuals nor party in veterinary objects, but the property of all veterinarians, and the ministrix to their honour and weal, and the promoter, in every form, of improvement, I trust the Editors will give these remarks a place.
ref: 1831 February 18, “Also an Army Veterinarian”, “On Chronic Foot Lameness; Mr. Coleman and Mr. Bracy Clark on the Foot; and the Army Veterinary Department”, in Messrs. Percivall and Youatt, editors, The Veterinarian, volume IV, London: […] Compton and Ritchie, […]; […] Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, […], published 1831, page 155:
text: When we had left the house, the little ministrix ran after us, apologised for her mistake, and returned us two marks.
ref: 1857, “The Sogne-Fjord”, in A Long Vacation Ramble in Norway and Sweden, Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., page 108:
text: The social status of the husband devolved on his wife, as implied in Pāṇini’s sūtra (Puṁyogād ākhyāyām, IV. 1. 48), i. e. a designation derived from her husband; e. g. mahāmātrī (ministrix), wife of a mahāmātra, a high government official, and gaṇakī, wife of a gaṇaka (accountant).
ref: 1963, Vasudeva Sharana Agrawala, India as Known to Pāṇini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashṭādhyāyī, page 88:
text: In one of his very last letters to Sibyl Colefax, Wilder took note of the widely circulated reports that she was the Julia of Eliot’s play and vehemently denied the justice of the parallel and added that she was neither the babbling hostess of Act I nor the Ministrix of the Mysteries of Act II.
ref: 1975, Richard H. Goldstone, Thornton Wilder: An Intimate Portrait, →ISBN, page 231:
text: Funny thing, David Blamires, who writes on DJ, is a Quaker, and Tony Stoneburner, who wrote his thesis on him, is ‘a Baptist minister very well up on theology and church history, and his wife is a Presbyterian ministrix (or is it the other way round?)’.
ref: 1981, The Long Conversation: A Memoir of David Jones, page 61:
text: Just as the deity was the Dominus, Mary was the Domina, and in her capacity as ministrix of the Treasury of Grace she came to be viewed as the singulare praesidium, the ‘unique help,’ of all those who turned to her, as in the ancient invocation to Mary "Sub tuum praesidium" (Graef 1:221, 307).[…]Thenceforward Mary was envisioned as sitting crowned in heaven, splendidly bejeweled and magnificently enthroned at the right hand of Christ, her son and spouse, as she, the mediatrix and ministrix of all grace, interceded for her votaries on earth.
ref: 1988, Linda Kay Hoff, Hamlet’s Choice: Hamlet—A Reformation Allegory (Studies in Renaissance Literature; volume 2), Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, →ISBN, pages 177 and 184:
text: She bequeathed £20 per year for life to her “beloved Sister Elizabeth Weekley,” daughter of Benjamin Blake, deceased; she gave £50 for the building of an Anabaptist parsonage house in Charlestown and £20 per year to the ministrix.
ref: 2008, Richard D. Sears, Ancestors of Anne (Smith) Weatherford (Founders and Presidents of Berea College; volume 8), page 96:
glosses: A female minister.
Synonyms: word: ministress
Related terms: prime ministrix