What's the difference between beldame and harridan?
Beldame
Definition:
(n.) Grandmother; -- corresponding to belsire.
(n.) An old woman in general; especially, an ugly old woman; a hag.
Example Sentences:
(1) View the wither’d Beldam’s face; Can thy keen inspection trace Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace?
Harridan
Definition:
(n.) A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.
Example Sentences:
(1) But that raised the alarming spectre of a feminist harridan – the worst sort of woman."
(2) If sometimes these women seem more harridans or harlots than heroines, we might remember Anne Elliot in Persuasion: "Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story .
(3) Women are either shaggable or saintly (maternal, married to a male celebrity, silent), or desiccated harridans and shameless slappers.
(4) There was one heart-warming storyline on the Square and that was the metamorphosis of Shirley from hard-faced harridan to almost-thawed mother of Mick.
(5) It was two summers ago that Wendi burst into the news and transformed her public self from harridan to heroine by, with lightning-fast reflexes, blocking a pie attack on her frail-looking husband in the midst of a difficult testimony in Britain before a committee of parliament investigating the hacking scandal.
(6) By the end of the century, he predicted, "the harridans who have been so proud of their spite will be trilling denials at their dinner tables".
(7) I do: my favourites, The Harridan and Relentless Laundry , are witty and brilliantly frank about the humiliations and tedium of life with small children, while brimming with evident love and affection for their offspring.
(8) Personally, I find the long ago move from being regarded as "totty" to "harridan" is a great relief, but I am still sickened by the refusal of so many to challenge the culture in which harassment and abuse thrives.
(9) It’s pitiful that the phrase “middle-aged woman” is wrongly equated with being a moody, barren harridan, and not a woman possessing wisdom born of experience, without crippling age-related physical decrepitude.
(10) This time round, the acting leader Harriet Harman – relentlessly mocked as "Harridan" and "Harperson" by the macho, rightwing press – has ruled herself out.
(11) Over the years, I'd gone from what I fondly imagined to be a switched-on, youngish-minded mum to a rancid, middle-aged harridan, glaring at shrieking texting huddles in the street – youngsters I didn't even know, but would consider lightly birching.
(12) She thumped Tracy Barlow when she was Karen McDonald, Corrie's hoop-earringed harridan, and as herbal tea-drinking lesbian caricature Anne Oldman in spoof A Touch Of Cloth , she took it to its piss-taking conclusion, delivering ridiculous one-liners with a deadpan face.