madam.
A polite form of address for a woman or lady.
Meaning & usage
A polite form of address for a woman or lady.
Mrs Grey wondered if the outfit she was trying on made her look fat. The sales assistant just said, “It suits you, madam”.
Later, Mrs Grey was sitting in her favourite tea shop. “Would madam like the usual cream cakes and patisserie with her tea?” the waitress asked.
The mistress of a household.
A conceited or quarrelsome girl.
Selina kept pushing and shoving during musical chairs. The nursery school teacher said she was a bad-tempered little madam.
A woman who runs a brothel, particularly one that specializes in finding prostitutes for rich and important clients.
After she grew too old to work as a prostitute, she became a madam.
A hated or contemptuous woman; used as a general term of abuse
Where this word comes from
From Middle English madame, from Old French madame, from ma (“my”) + dame (“lady”), from post-classical Latin mea domina. Doublet of Madonna.
To address as "madam".
To be a madam; to run (a brothel).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English madame, from Old French madame, from ma (“my”) + dame (“lady”), from post-classical Latin mea domina. Doublet of Madonna.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.