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A peeress is a woman in the British nobility. She may hold a title in her own right — duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess, baroness — or she may be called a peeress because she is married to a peer. The word lives in British public life: the House of Lords, royal pages, history books. It is formal and rather old-fashioned; ordinary British people usually say lady, or they use the actual title. You will not hear it in everyday Taiwan English, except in a story about lords and ladies. Though actually, English is messy here. A peer is a noble of high rank, and -ess marks the woman, but newspapers often just say baroness or duchess and never use peeress at all. It is not a princess, and it is not a woman who peers through a window.
女貴族；貴族夫人（英國）
組成peer（英國貴族）+ -ess（女性後綴）。-ess 來自中古英語 -esse，更早是古法文 -esse、後期拉丁文 -issa。peer 本身可往上追到中古英語 peren、古英語，再往上是西日耳曼語的 *pūrijan。
同家族的字
- peera member of the British nobility; a peeress is the woman in that rank, or the wife of a peer
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
peeressnoun
- 1
A noblewoman married to a peer.
- But there were more than a score of peers there beside, with their peeresses in tall feathers, diamonds, and monstrous hoops.
- 2
A woman holding a noble title in her own right.
- [I]t is obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady to a British peeress.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。