Muse vs Mistress - What's the difference?
muse | mistress |
A source of inspiration.
(archaic) A poet; a bard.
To become lost in thought, to ponder.
To say (something) with due consideration or thought.
* (seeCites)
To think on; to meditate on.
* (rfdate) Thomson
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson
, volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= To wonder at.
An act of musing; a period of thoughtfulness.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , I.xii:
* 1978 , (Lawrence Durrell), Livia , Faber & Faber 1992 (Avignon Quintet), p. 416:
A gap or hole in a hedge, fence, etc. through which a wild animal is accustomed to pass; a muset.
A woman, specifically one with great control, authority or ownership.
* , chapter=19
, title= A female teacher.
A female partner in an extramarital relationship, generally including sexual relations.
A dominatrix.
* 2006 , Amelia May Kingston, The Triumph of Hope (page 376)
A woman well skilled in anything, or having the mastery over it.
* Addison
A woman regarded with love and devotion; a sweetheart.
(Scotland) A married woman; a wife.
* Sir (Walter Scott)
(obsolete) The jack in the game of bowls.
female companion to a master
As nouns the difference between muse and mistress
is that muse is while mistress is (archaic) used as the title of a married woman before her name now used only in the abbreviated form mrs .muse
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) muse, from (etyl) .Noun
(s)- (Milton)
Usage notes
The plural musae'' can also be found, though it is much rarer than ''muses .Etymology 2
First attested in 1340. From (etyl) muser.Verb
(mus)- Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise.
Fantasy of navigation, passage=It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; […]; or perhaps to muse on the irrelevance of the borders that separate nation states and keep people from understanding their shared environment.}}
- (Shakespeare)
Synonyms
* See alsoNoun
(en noun)- still he sate long time astonished / As in great muse , ne word to creature spake.
- He fell into a muse and pulled his upper lip.
Etymology 3
From (etyl) musse. See muset.Noun
(en noun)- Find a hare without a muse . (old proverb)
Anagrams
* ----mistress
English
Noun
(es)The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress , and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.}}
- As part of BDSM play they can enhance the domineering tread of a mistress or hobble the steps of a slave.
- A letter desires all young wives to make themselves mistresses of Wingate's Arithmetic.
- (Clarendon)
- Several of the neighbouring mistresses had assembled to witness the event of this memorable evening.
- (Beaumont and Fletcher)
Usage notes
In the sexual sense, mistress is narrowly taken to mean a woman involved in a committed'' extramarital relationship (an affair), often supported financially (a kept woman). It is broadly taken to mean a woman involved in an extramarital relationship regardless of the level of commitment, but requires more than a single act of adultery.Tiger Woods Does Not Have 11 “Mistresses”: His many paramours aren’t committed enough to merit that term.by Jesse Sheidlower, '', Dec. 10, 2009.