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Tuesday December 15, 2009

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harridan [HAIR-uh-din]

noun

1. A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.

• Playing a woman who does no right, Estelle Parsons can do no wrong. She provides the white-hot accelerant for the scorching domestic flash fires of this tragicomic family portrait. Parsons, who turned 82 in November, tears through the part of Violet Weston, a pill-popping, misery-spreading Oklahoma harridan, with the energy of an actor far younger.
  Anonymous, "Mini Reviews", The Washington Post, Dec 4, 2009
• Sarah Palin is going rogue. The Democrats are going rottweiler. Liberals in the media make heinous personal attacks, dress up quibbles and debating as "fact-checking" and compare her to such noxious harridans as Evita Peron and Madonna.
  Kyles Smith, "RAKED ALASKA FOR DEMS, PALIN IS A WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION", New York Post, Nov 22, 2009
• At his time of life, he could tell a young woman when he saw one. No painted old harridan could deceive him. After all, if Miss Ross had grey hair, she had plenty of it, and it was her own.
  L. Allen Harker Jan and Her Job (1917)

Origin of the Word

Harridan, approximately 1700, derives from French haridelle "a poore tit, or leane ill-favored jade [woman]."