shopkeeperess

English

Alternative forms

• shopkeepress

Etymology

From shopkeeper +‎ -ess.

Noun

shopkeeperess (plural shopkeeperesses)

1. (dated) female equivalent of shopkeeper
   • 1824 September 3, Elizabeth Peabody, “Elizabeth Peabody’s Letters to Maria Chase of Salem, Relating to Lafayette’s Visit in 1824”, in The Essex Institute Historical Collections, volume LXXXV, Salem, Mass.: […] the Essex Institute, published October 1949, page 362:

     Mr. Gilman of South Carolina (Charleston) formerly of Salem—(son to the shopkeeperess) wrote the masterly analysis of Brown’s philosophy.

   • 1858 October 23, “A Summer in the Clouds”, in Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Arts, volume X, number 251, London: W. & R. Chambers, published 1859, page 261:

     No commonplace, rosy, close-shaved bourgeois are there; no tight, trim, pale, eager shopkeeperesses, such as lately sold you bad gloves in the Rue d’Antin, or gave you short change for a guinea in the Marais.

   • 1865 October 24, “A Concert Experience”, in Gold Hill Daily News‎^[1], volume 5, number 629, Gold Hill, Nev.:

     While the latter was being sung, we were told how our neighbor had a falling out with her mother just before her husband died, and how the mother aforesaid would not attend the said husband’s funeral; but, subsequently, the mother met this afflicted daughter somewhere on the highway, and seeing her child dressed in deep mourning, the unnatural parent called at a milliner’s store, where both parties traded, and remarked to the shop-keeperess that she had just seen her daughter, and that she looked sad.

   • 1869 August 24, “News and Miscellaneous Items”, in The Charleston Daily Courier‎^[2], volume LXVII, number 21,395, Charleston, S.C.:

     The shop-keeperesses of England have made the discovery that the proper length of a gentleman’s sock is the same as the measure of his clenched fist, round the knuckles.

   • 1871 February 2, “Tant Mieux”, in The Birmingham Daily Post, volume XVII, number 3,914, Birmingham, page 6:

     The shopkeeperess was polite, but dignified.

   • 1884 June 1, “The New Umbrella”, in The Hosier & Glover’s Gazette and Outfitter’s Chronicle, volume I, number 6, page 22:

     Mr. Wiseman entered a shop to boy, among other articles, a new umbrella. The shopkeeperess showed him the newly-patented Self-opener, and praised its working. […] The following day he called on the shopkeeperess, whose eloquence had induced him to obtain the new umbrella, and said: […]

   • 1905, Truth, page 368:

     The retired shopkeepers and shopkeeperesses, who comprised the bulk of the local society, declined to have anything to do with him.

   • 1911 June 10, “American Women, Coronations, and Courts”, in The Argonaut, volume LXVIII, number 1785, San Francisco, page 370:

     There is a difference also between a titled husband and his American wife. Why, then, do American women yearn to be a part of such a society, even on its outer fringe? Why do they yearn to be presented at courts which look down on them as successful shopkeeperesses? Why do they want their daughters to marry into a circle where they will always be held at arms’ length? Even if they marry dukes they are classed apart as “American duchesses,” and the queen herself sets them carefully aside when selecting her ladies of honor.

   • 1920, Frederick L. Coe, “War Minnows”, in Abbey & Imbrie Centennial Fish Stories, New York, N.Y.: Baker, Murray & Imbrie, Inc., page 27:

     Ever try to buy anything from a fat French shopkeeperess who can’t understand a word of English—or American—while your knowledge of French is confined to the little forced upon you at high-school and as promptly forgotten?

   • 1965, The Daily Review:

     Trying to save the shopkeeperess from concentration camp, Tono involuntarily causes her death.

   • 1967–69, Graham Thomas, SAGUS, volumes 10 (1967-69), published 2016, page 44:

     When we reached the village rather than going to see Membury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort, we instead stopped at ‘Ye Olde Village Stores’ where we each brought a drink. The shop keeperess asked where we were from and when we said Oxford told us she too used to live there.

   • 2003, Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Widows”, in A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 265:

     These restrictions meant that only a few widows could engage in formal commerce. Many more, however, can be observed operating in the ‘informal sector’, as in 1598 when a widow called ‘die Kremerin’ (‘the shopkeeperess’) was fined for having ‘bought up and regrated nuts and other foodstuffs’, […].

   • 2013, Deborah Simonton, Anne Montenach, editors, Female Agency in the Urban Economy: Gender in European Towns, 1640-1830 (Routledge Research in Gender and History), Routledge:

     One pass was actually issued to ‘Dominicus Gianelli, shopkeeperess [female form] (kræmmerske)’.

   • 2015, Oliver Loo, transl., The 1810 Grimm Manuscripts: The First Complete English Translation of the 1810 Handwritten Manuscripts; The Beginnings of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen; Children’s and Household Tales, →ISBN, pages 439–440:

     Thereon nothing was safe enough and sure enough for her, she disguised herself as an old shopkeeperess, colored her face, so that no person would recognize her, and went outward to the dwarf-house. She knocked on the door and cried: “open up, open up, I am the old shopkeeperess, that has good wares to sell. […] “Come I will also comb you,” said the shopkeeperess, but hardly had the comb stuck Sneewittchen’s hairs, there it fell down and was dead.