Lady

Lady

The word lady is a polite term for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to, or spouse of, a lord or gentleman, and in many contexts a term for any adult woman. Once relating specifically to women of high social class or status, over the last 300 years it has spread to embrace all adult women, though in some contexts may still be used to evoke a concept of "ladylike" standards of behaviour.

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Famous quotes containing the word lady:

    A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “No, not another song,” said he,
    “Because my lady came
    A year ago for the first time
    At midnight to my room,
    And I must lie between the sheets
    When the clock begins to chime.”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)