Sultaness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A woman who rules an Islamic state as sovereign ; the wife or consort of a sultan who holds a royal title
2. A female monarch of a Muslim sultanate ; a royal consort married to a sultan and sharing his court status
3. The female ruler of a sultanate in her own right ; the principal wife or consort of a male sultan within the palace

Etymology: "Sultaness" is a plain English formation: the noun "sultan," a ruler title borrowed into English from Arabic through Middle English forms like "soudan," with the feminine suffix "-ess" added to mark a female holder of the office. The suffix is the same one found in words like "actress" and "countess," so the word needs no special explanation beyond its parts. The base word itself has a more interesting trail. Arabic "sultān" originally meant something like "authority" or "power," and it came to name a ruler in its own right, the word's older sense surviving in the idea of dominion. English speakers picked it up through travel and trade with the Ottoman and wider Islamic world, so the title reached them with the sense of a sovereign rather than a general concept of power.

Synonyms: sultana, sultaness