Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In some countries, that part of a Christian church which is reserved for the women of the congregation.
  • noun Among the ancients, the part of a dwelling of the better class devoted to the use of women—generally the remotest part, lying beyond an interior court; hence, in occasional use, a similar division of any house or establishment where the sexes are separated, as a Mohammedan harem. Also gyneconitis.
  • noun A manufactory or establishment in ancient Rome for making clothes and furniture for the emperor's family, the managers of which were women.
  • noun See gynæcium.

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

  • noun That part of a large house, among the ancients, exclusively appropriated to women.

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

  • noun Alternative form of gynæceum.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Not so in Greece: there the woman accepts invitations only among families to which she is related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner part of the house which is called the gynaeceum, where only the nearest relatives are admitted.”

    The Women of the Caesars Ferrero, Guglielmo, 1871-1942 1911

  • Or rather, they appear to become what they disavow, since these men are characterized as imposters, philosophers caught up in a (dis) embodied form of drag, whose ideas are better suited, as Schelling says, for the gynaeceum, the "lady's boudoir" (Of Human Freedom 19; 7, 401).

    Mourning Becomes Theory: Schelling and the Absent Body of Philosophy 2000

  • Almost absent-mindedly, in obligation to his Vach, he had married and begotten; but he took his sons with him from the time they were old enough to leave the gynaeceum until they were ready for their Navy hitches.

    A Circus of Hells Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1969

  • They might then have gone to the gynaeceum for family reunion.

    Ensign Flandry Anderson, Poul, 1926- 1966

  • Apart from this, botanists are generally agreed that the concrescence of parts of the flower-whorls -- in the gynaeceum as the seed-covering, and in the corolla as the seat of attraction, more than in the androecium and the calyx -- is an indication of advance, as is also the concrescence that gives the condition of epigyny.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 Various

  • The carpel, or aggregate of carpels forming the pistil or gynaeceum, comprises an ovary containing one or more ovules and a receptive surface or stigma; the stigma is sometimes carried up on a style.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 Various

  • Is siquidem, et dum in aula esset, nullo non contumeliae genere in proceres et gynaeceum etiam aulicum usus fuerat, fiducia pugnacitatis qua se terribilem cunctis reddiderat; sed etiam postquam se ad comitatum Andini receperat, dum Andegavi arcem toto illo tractu munitissimam et urbi populosae impositam teneret, oppidanis et toti provinciae gravis ob crebras exactiones, quas privata auctoritate, non consulto plerumque Andino ipso, faciebat, summum omnium odium in se concitaverat.

    Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois George Chapman

  • It is true, of course, that such a gallery is found in the church of S. Agnese, where the low-level of the floor relatively to the surface of the ground outside may have suggested this method of construction; but whereas, in the East, the provision of a gallery (used as a gynaeceum) was usual from very early times, it never became otherwise than exceptional in the West.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy 1840-1916 1913

  • She had been at the Brompton gynaeceum nearly eleven years -- only leaving it for her holidays -- and now her education was finished, and Mr. Sheldon could find no excuse for leaving her at school any longer, so her departure had been finally agreed upon.

    Birds of Prey 1875

  • Was she not accustomed to suffer -- she, the scapegoat of defrauded nurses and indignant landladies, the dependent and drudge of her kinswoman's gynaeceum, the despised of her father?

    Birds of Prey 1875

Comments

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  • The ladies in waves besiege the gym

    That once was the guys' elysium,

    Now a hostile environ

    For louts pumping iron

    And turning a proper gynaeceum!

    July 12, 2015