Now arch. Aslo 4 stedame. [f. STEP- + DAME (sense 8).] A stepmother.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), V. 273. Vortymerus deide, þoruȝ venym of his stedame Rowen.
c. 1400. Maundev. (Roxb.), xxv. 120. Þai wedd … þaire stepdames efter þe deed of þaire faders.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. v. 39. His cruell stepdame.
1667. Milton, P. L., IV. 279. Where old Cham … Hid Amalthea and her Florid Son, Young Bacchus, from his Stepdame Rhea’s eye.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Past., iii. 48. A Stepdame too I have, a cursed she, Who rules my Hen-peck’d Sire, and orders me.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., ix. Other stepdames have tried less laudable means for clearing the way to the succession of their own children.
1894. Lowell, trans. Kalevala, in Century Mag., May, 27/2. Small and weak my mother left me … In the keeping of the stepdame.
b. fig.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), I. 5. Forȝetingnes all wey kypinge þe craft of a stepdamme, he is enmy of mynde.
1395. Purvey, Remonstr. (1851), 137. Necligence is stepdame of lernynge.
1447. Bokenham, Seyntys, Marg., 942. To eschewyn prolixyte, Stepdam of fauour.
1563–87. Foxe, A. & M. (1596), 257/2. The church of Rome, which of a mother is become a stepdame.
1598. Barret, Theor. Warres, V. ii. 131. An ouer commaunding mount is a stepdame to a fortresse.
1646. Earl Monm., trans. Biondi’s Civil Wars, VI. 8. Vertue the mother of courage … when it meets with desperation the stepdame of courage.
1730. T. Boston, Mem., xii. 512. The world hath been a step dame to me.
1866. Carlyle, Remin. (1881), I. 219. What a tragic, treacherous stepdame is vulgar Fortune to her children!
c. attrib.
1800. Campbell, Lines Grave Suicide, 13. To feel the stepdame buffetings of fate.
1827. Heber, Europe, 99. And dread the step-dame sway of unaccustom’d war.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. VI. v. Did Nature … fling thee forth, stepdame-like, a Distraction into this distracted Eighteenth Century?
