doctrix

From Middle English doctrice, from Latin doctrīx (“a female teacher”), feminine form of doctor (“a teacher”). The "female physician" sense is from the English doctor (which is from the Latin doctor) medical sense, analyzed as a feminine form of the English word. By surface analysis, doc(tor) +‎ -trix.

doctrix (plural doctrices or doctrixes) (rare)

1. (chiefly obsolete; now humorous) A female doctor, chiefly a physician.

   Synonyms: (archaic) doctoress / doctress, (obsolete, rare) Drss.

   Hyponym: (rare) physicianess

   • 1664, Matthew Mackaile, Moffet-Well, or, A Topographico-Spagyricall Description of the Minerall Wells, at Moffet in Annandale of Scotland, Edinburgh: […] Robert Brown, pages 173–174:

     Secondly, There is a Doctrix, concerning whom I will relate unto you these most certain stories. […] A sickly Rustick came unto her, complaining of a pain in his neck, and betwixt his shoulders. She affirmed his disease to be the Ripples in his neck, and essayed to cure him thus; […] A Rustick woman came unto her, to get her advice concerning the Gravell, wherewith she was much troubled. The Doctrix gave her this advice, for causing the stone fall down into the neck of the bladder, You must stand leaning forwards with your two hands, upon the arms of a great chair, setting your feet far asunder; then let your Husband take a broad shovel, and give you four or five good clanks or strokes upon the buttocks with it.

   • 1878, Family Herald, page 412:

     One specialist asked her a grave question as to an eye case, another as to the brain, a third as to excision of the hip-joint, a fourth on tuberculosis, and so on. In ten minutes the doctrix had settled points that had taken those grave gray heads years to comprehend, and had fallen into as many pits.

   • 2004 April 17, polar bear, “Nine.”, in alt.slack‎^[1] (Usenet), archived from the original on 4 January 2026:

     Ace to Ten / Court Cards / Pages (notorious bobbies?) / Knights (famous doktors?^[sic]) / Queens (famous doctrices?) / Kings - "Bob" again. Obviously the king of sales, but also the king of pipes. Thus he appears three times, which is a sacred number. Connie should probably be Queen, or maybe King of saucers and squids for obvious reasons. Gotta strike a balance here somehow.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:doctrix.
2. (obsolete) A female teacher.
   • 1603, A Treatise of Three Conversions, page 11:

     Alice Driuer martyr. This was the doctrix of the forſaid weauer, who was ſo malepart and contumelious before the iudges, as firſt her eares were cutt of, for callinge Q. Mary Iezabell.

   • 1750, “Eleanora Grant appointed by the Magistrates Schoolmistress of Aberdeen”, in Aberdeen Journal; republished as “Extracts from the Aberdeen Journal”, in Antiquarian Gleanings from Aberdeenshire Records, compiled by Gavin Turreff, Aberdeen: George & Robert King;  […], 1859, page 243:

      […]—these are, therefore, advertising all who incline to be taught any manner of needle-work, washing, clear-starching, and many other parts of education, fit for accomplishing a gentlewoman, that they can have access to enter to the said Miss Eleanora Grant’s school in a fortnight hence, where they will be educate as above, and genteelly used by her and her doctrix.

   • 1907, Blackwood's Magazine, volume 182, page 68:

     Other items in the account are payments made to the Doctrix of the school, drink-money for the tailor’s men, sequins for head-suits, and a “baberick” or baldric (i.e., a chain for the neck).

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:doctrix.

• “doctrix, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

From doceō, doctum (“to teach”, verb) +‎ -trīx f (“-ess”, agentive suffix).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈdɔk.triːks]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈdɔk.triks]

doctrīx f (genitive doctrīcis, masculine doctor); third declension

1. teacher, instructor, trainer (female)

Third-declension noun.

• doctorissa

• → English: doctrix

• “doctrix”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “doctrix”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• doctrix in Ramminger, Johann (16 July 2016 (last accessed)), Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700‎^[2], pre-publication website, 2005-2016