virago

Ms. Boycott chose the name — a virago is defined both as a strong, heroic woman and as a harpy — and it fit the mission, and perhaps also Ms. Callil’s persona.

From New York Times ● Oct. 29, 2022

“HLN’s virago of vengeance,” the New York Times dubbed her in 2011.

From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2016

“Jackson is an awesome virago who delivers her lines like bayonet thrusts,” Time magazine drama critic T.E.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2016

It was Taylor's ability to get into the skin of the character, more than the padding and a tousled salt-and-pepper wig, which transformed the legendary beauty into a blowsy virago.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 23, 2011

And the virago turned to her hen-pecked husband.

From Mrs. Thompson A Novel by W. B. (William Babington) Maxwell

Hagen can be one of the stage's great ripsnorting viragoes, as she demonstrated last year off-Broadway in the title role of Shaw's Mrs.Warren's Profession.

From Time Magazine Archive

Wodehouse still lives in the same cloud-cuckoo land of titled old blighters, muscular viragoes and fluffy-minded bachelors that he first celebrated 67 books ago.

From Time Magazine Archive

It was only by mob misunderstanding that the suffragettes were conceived as viragoes, just as it was only by mob misunderstanding that the members of the Society of Friends were conceived as desperadoes.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 The Recent Days (1910-1914) by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

"Brayvo!" shrilled the voice of Mrs. Royle, champion among viragoes.

From Brother Copas by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Behind them came a woman escorted by two coarse, red-faced viragoes.

From The Tremendous Event by Maurice Leblanc

When transgender entered the popular lexicon through the efforts of activists and aid organizations in the mid-1990s, it replaced transsexual, which had replaced transvestite, which was what they called cross-dressers and before that viragos.

From Slate ● May 14, 2018

Even the honest friendship between him and the remarkable woman he calls his "viragos" gives him many a pleasant hour.

From A Woman-Hater by Charles Reade

She felt her courage leaving her—she must be rid of this fearful band of viragos at any price.

From Joseph II. and His Court by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

This hag was a reputed witch and fortune-teller, and acted as president of the young viragos, several of whom, it was afterwards ascertained, belonged to the first families of Rome.

From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 2 by Charles Mackay

Come on, then, plague, war, famine and viragos!

From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II by Herman Melville