matriarch
may tree ork
- n a female head of a family or tribe
- n a feisty older woman with a big bosom (as drawn in cartoons)
- The pill-popping matriarch has echoes of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night; the withering sarcasm recalls Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
- His grandmother, who outlived him, was very much the stern Victorian matriarch .
- Throughout the Kennedy saga of success and tragedy, Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the family, has endured with an equanimity that has amazed outsiders and inspired her children.