virago

It was someone laying down the law — without worrying that a man would label her a virago or harridan or termagant.

From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2019

Yet, tellingly, this virago is also the creation of a male writer-director.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2018

“HLN’s virago of vengeance,” the New York Times dubbed her in 2011.

From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2016

“Jackson is an awesome virago who delivers her lines like bayonet thrusts,” Time magazine drama critic T.E.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2016

There, a tumbled heap, lay Mrs. Macfarlane, no longer a defiant virago, but a weak, sickly, elderly woman, partly supported on Joe Kelly’s knee, her face ghastly pale, her arms hanging limp.

From Humours of Irish Life by Various

Hagen can be one of the stage's great ripsnorting viragoes, as she demonstrated last year off-Broadway in the title role of Shaw's Mrs.Warren's Profession.

From Time Magazine Archive

Wodehouse still lives in the same cloud-cuckoo land of titled old blighters, muscular viragoes and fluffy-minded bachelors that he first celebrated 67 books ago.

From Time Magazine Archive

This was the language, it appeared to Mr. Roscorla, of a virago; only, viragoes do not ordinarily have tears in their eyes, as was the case with Mabyn when she finished her indignant appeal.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 88, April, 1875 by Various

Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two viragoes about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub.

From Oliver Goldsmith A Biography by Washington Irving

It was only by mob misunderstanding that the suffragettes were conceived as viragoes, just as it was only by mob misunderstanding that the members of the Society of Friends were conceived as desperadoes.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 The Recent Days (1910-1914) by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

When transgender entered the popular lexicon through the efforts of activists and aid organizations in the mid-1990s, it replaced transsexual, which had replaced transvestite, which was what they called cross-dressers and before that viragos.

From Slate ● May 14, 2018

This hag was a reputed witch and fortune-teller, and acted as president of the young viragos, several of whom, it was afterwards ascertained, belonged to the first families of Rome.

From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 2 by Charles Mackay

"If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old viragos in Exeter," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

From He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope

Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two viragos about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately the whole community was in a hubbub.

From Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving

She felt her courage leaving her—she must be rid of this fearful band of viragos at any price.

From Joseph II. and His Court by L. (Luise) Mühlbach