So while this term isn't necessarily complimentary, it's much more creative than calling someone a grump. HarridanĪ particularly vicious older woman - the term harridan has a similar meaning to, but just sounds so much more inviting than “hag.” As puts it, "you might call the old lady next door who yells at you to stay off her lawn a harridan." It went on to reference the Wicked Witch of the West. Speaking of the Harry Potter series, if you want to read about all the times Professor McGonagall was an absolute badass, look no further. Synonymous with female guardians, duennas in popular literature include Minerva McGonagall from Harry Potter and Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games. Which is why these 13 terms need to find their way back into everyday vocabulary - and society - stat. I love how words like doyenne (a badass female leader) and virago (a woman of great strength) open up new ways for women to see themselves and to communicate. It wasn’t until recently, when I encountered the article “Margaret Atwood: Doyenne of Digital-Savvy Authors” that I began to think that maybe, words for diverse, strong-minded women had existed all along. We have so many great role models these days (Hillary Clinton, Jane Goodall, Tina Fey) - we need more terms to describe their all-pervasive awesomeness. Not to mention Hollywood’s proliferation of female stereotypes. The words we use today - “lady,” “babe,” “girlfriend” - are so vague and impersonal they fail miserably to capture a woman’s depth and complexity. Even the so-called positive terms that do come to mind - queen, matriarch, madame - have such antiquated, politically incorrect roots they can hardly be used in a modern context. Unfortunately, this also means that words for powerful, intelligent women are hard to come by in the English language. It's no secret that women have been viewed as less important in Western culture for centuries.
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