grande madame

English

Etymology

From French grande madame.

Noun

grande madame (plural grandes mesdames or grandes madames or grande madames)

1. Synonym of grande dame
   • 1873, Mrs. Riddell, Home, Sweet Home. A Novel, volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, pages 263–264:

     “‘Dear Droigel,’ she made reply, ‘the same idea has occurred to me so often, so often, only I could never put it into words. You are right. Somewhere a youth or a maiden is living a wretched life because of the voice given in error to me. I ought never to have been a singer; it is not my rôle in the least.’ / “‘You think that of a grande madame will suit you better?’ I suggested. / “‘I mean to try,’ she answered gaily. ‘Come and see, Droigel, how I support my character.’ / “‘Child,’ I said, ‘if you are really going to try this new life, better leave the old entirely behind you. Between Droigel and Lady ⸺ there is a gulf fixed; but if Mademoiselle ever wants anything in which Droigel can serve her, she has but to hold up her finger and say, “Come.”’

   • 1906, J. H. Yoxall, Beyond the Wall, London: Hutchinson & Co., page 151:

     “Such a beautiful grande madame . . . and me a child—no name!”

   • 1914, Elinor Mordaunt, The Island, London: William Heinemann, page 152:

     Yet we native women, says she, we bear the children of our body with short anguish and long joy; but the white Grandes Madames bear the children of their thoughts with a travail that never ceases—so says my grandmother; and she tells of what she knows, for she is old in years, and very wise.

   • 1951, The Arizona Quarterly, page 42:

     The only thing Sister Bauknight omitted from the Saint-Simon saga was the chapter of disintegration dating from the Civil War. Nothing of the burned manor, the pine house standing over its scattered brick, the shrunken acreage, the worn soil, and the social drop from “grandes mesdames” to country wives.

   • 1957, Charlton Laird, West of the River, New York: Bantam Books, page 26:

     “B’coup d’piastre, lots of money,” he had boasted, proud he could spend so much. “The grande madame, she is not to live in the pigsty, eh?”

   • 1976, Daniel Topolski, Muzungu: One Man’s Africa, Arlington Books, page 40:

     We ended up in a bar run by a truly ‘grande madame’ who danced, drink in hand, with her own girls.

   • 1978, The Spectator, page 23, column 1:

     It begins in a thoroughly promising fashion on the patio of a grande madame (Janet Suzman) during an economic summit meeting in Miami Beach.

   • 1996, Jill Jonnes, Hep-cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America’s Romance with Illegal Drugs, Scribner, →ISBN, page 176:

     A biography of Pop Buell, a legendary American known as a helper of Laotian hill tribes, describes how in 1960 he had “watched from the side of the [Phong Savan] airstrip as a modern twin-engined plane took on a huge load of opium. Beneath the wing, talking heatedly with the plane’s Corsican pilot was a slender woman, . . . [the] grande madame of opium from Saigon.”

   • 1997 March 19, Charles Laurence, “Cookbook celebrates good food, sex of yesterday”, in The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ont., page 10, column 1:

     “Food and sex are inseparable: the grandes madames knew this, and gourmet bordellos were their great innovation.”

   • 2006, Kate Muir, Left Bank, Viking, →ISBN, page 136:

     “Do you regale your little student friends with every detail of our lives? Do you tell them about all your conquests?” Then suddenly her anger reached a higher pitch. “Do you tell them how you rub like a dog against the grande madames of the Seventh when you cut their hair? Do you—”