Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A woman who seeks social and financial advancement by unscrupulous means.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A female adventurer; a woman engaged in or capable of bold enterprises, especially enterprises of equivocal character.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A female adventurer; a woman who tries to gain position by equivocal means.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A female adventurer; a woman who seeks adventure.
  • noun A woman of doubtful reputation or suspected character who pursues personal advancement, especially by sexual means; a demirep.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a woman adventurer

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From adventure +‎ -ess.

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Examples

  • Despite her aloofness, Mrs. Grant did now and then steal a glance at Mrs. Pope to see if this brazen creature [526] would betray in any manner the fact that she was sleeping with the senator, but the adventuress was a wily one who disclosed nothing.

    Space Michener, James 1982

  • "Hum -- maybe my adventuress was the same person in disguise," Mr. Palmer thoughtfully observed.

    Mona Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 1884

  • Meanwhile, Irene Adler has been running around as the kind of adventuress I thought "adventuress" meant when I was a little kid reading the first few paragraphs of "A Scandal in Bohemia".

    Aliens in This World 2009

  • It was exciting, it was really valuable, to have to that extent rubbed shoulders with an "adventuress"; it showed one that for the adventuress there might on occasion be much to be said.

    A Small Boy and Others Henry James 1879

  • "adventuress," which has an ugly sound, but of which no one exactly knows the precise meaning, began to be bruited about.

    Vera Nevill Or, Poor Wisdom's Chance H. Lovett Cameron

  • "adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old

    Children of the Whirlwind Leroy Scott 1902

  • Carstairs' wife, the mysterious foreign adventuress.

    The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz – review 2011

  • Think Buenos Aires, runaway Nazis, giant dice in the opening shot and musical numbers – all grafted on to a three-way melodrama of outrageous sexual provocation and emotional blackmail that's played like a minuet by scheming adventuress Hayworth and her two knock-kneed beaus itinerant gambler Glenn Ford and scarfaced casino boss George Macready on a gigantic, lavishly appointed set that amounts to a fantasia on mid-century Hollywood's notions of Latin-Americanness.

    Gilda is pure, undistilled Rita Hayworth 2011

  • Frankie then sets off for Paris and en route keeps company with a spinster adventuress.

    Thomas Gladysz: She's So Unusual: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt Thomas Gladysz 2011

  • Of the specials, the second, Planet of the Dead (disc two), is my favorite, because it introduced the high-class thief and adventuress Lady Christina, played by Michelle Ryan (The Bionic Woman).

    Doctor Who: The Complete Specials » DVDs Worth Watching 2010

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