How to Use abbess in a Sentence

abbess

noun
  • That comes from a book on Hildegard of Bingen, who was an abbess in a monastery in Germany in the eleven-hundreds.
    Jane Hu, The New Yorker, 30 Nov. 2021
  • Following Offa’s death in 796, Cynethryth joined a religious order and became abbess of the monastery.
    Livia Gershon, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Aug. 2021
  • Behind Convent Walls, his ninth film and one of the breezier entries in his filmography, checks off all these boxes with a light-on-plot chronicle of naughty nuns and their abbess’s futile efforts to wrangle them.
    Elle Carroll, Vulture, 6 Dec. 2021
  • The heavy religious imagery suggests the anonymous woman was an early Christian leader, perhaps an abbess.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Dec. 2022
  • So that is a moment when it’s really dramatized: the sacramental authority of the priest on the one hand and the local, relational authority of the abbess on the other hand.
    The Salt Lake Tribune, 11 May 2022
  • The discovery of a document detailing the occult activities of an old abbess suddenly launches us on a grail quest.
    Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2020
  • The Anglo-Saxon bling suggested the woman was powerful in her own right and extremely devout, perhaps an early Christian leader, a princess or an abbess.
    Katie Hunt, CNN, 6 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'abbess.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: