subs. (once literary: now vulgar).—A woman: also SHE-ONE: cf. HE = a man. Hence SHE-HOUSE (GROSE) = a house under petticoat rule; SHE-SCHOOL = a girls’ school.

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  1602.  SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night, i. 5, 259.

        Lady, you are the cruell’st SHE alive.
    Ibid. (1605), Cymbeline, i. 3.
The SHES of Italy should not betray
Mine interest and his honour.

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  1648–55.  FULLER, The Church History of Britain, vi. 297. Nunneries also were good SHEE-SCHOOLS.

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  d. 1650.  CRASHAW, To his Supposed Mistress.

        That not impossible SHE,
That shall command my heart and me.

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  1704.  STEELE, The Lying Lover, i. 1. I … gaz’d … till I forgot ’twas winter, so many pretty SHE’S marched by me.

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  2.  (Charterhouse).—A plum pudding: also SHEE: cf. HE.

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