American Heritage Dictionary Entry: lady HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key. Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window. guide to the dictionary THE USAGE PANEL The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. The Panelists NEED HELP SOLVING A CROSSWORD PUZZLE? Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. -- AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. OPEN DICTIONARY PROJECT Share your ideas for new words and new meanings of old words! Start Sharing Now! -- See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series! Find out more! INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES? Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com la·dy (lādē) Share: Tweet n. pl. la·dies 1. A woman of high social standing or refinement, especially when viewed as dignified or well-mannered. 2. A woman who is the head of a household: Is the lady of the house at home? 3. a. A woman, especially when spoken of or to in a polite way: Ladies, may I show you to your table? b. Used as a form of address for a woman, often with sarcasm or irritation: Look, lady, I was ahead of you in line. 4. a. A woman who is the object of romantic or chivalrous love: a knight serving his lady. b. Informal A wife or girlfriend: a man kissing his lady at the airport. 5. A lady in waiting: the queen and her ladies. 6. Lady Chiefly British a. A general feminine title of nobility and other rank, specifically as the title for the wife or widow of a knight or baronet. b. Used as a form of address for a woman of high rank, especially for a marchioness, countess, viscountess, baroness, or baronetess. 7. Lady The Virgin Mary. Usually used with Our. [Middle English, mistress of a household, from Old English hlǣfdige; see dheigh- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] Usage Note: The word lady goes back to Old English and was traditionally used for a woman of social standing or rank. Perhaps because of the word's association with high society, today lady is most acceptable in parallel with gentleman, as in the sentences Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please! and At the opera for the first time, they were dazzled by all of the ladies in ball gowns and gentlemen in sharp tuxedos. This latter sentence was approved by 91 percent of the Usage Panel in our 2016 survey. By contrast, the sentence Nancy Brown will be the first lady to serve as chair of the committee was accepted by only 29 percent of the Panel, with many panelists commenting that the use of lady where woman would easily do can be taken as offensive. The degree to which lady is or isn't considered offensive has become dependent on context. When presented with a range of sentences using lady in formal and informal contexts with both male and female speakers, many members of the Panel stated that they found lady to be acceptable and inoffensive when used ironically or jocularly. · The use of lady as an attributive to modify another noun, as in the phrase lady doctor, is widely considered offensive. When the sex of the person is relevant, the preferred modifier is woman or female. See Usage Note at female. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices: Indo-European Roots Semitic Roots The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 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