Definition of "principessa"

The sins against propriety in manners are as frequent and as glaring. I do not speak of the hoyden vivacity, harlot tenderness, and dancing-school affability, with which vulgar novel-writers always deck out their countesses and principessas, chevaliers, dukes, and marquisses; […]

1821, Letters to Richard Heber, Esq. Containing Critical Remarks on the Series of Novels Beginning with “Waverley,” and an Attempt to Ascertain Their Author., London: […] Rodwell and Martin, […], page 34

The Principessas, and they are all Principessas here, have fourteen or fifteen children a-piece; […]

1843, John Heneage Jesse, George Selwyn and His Contemporaries; with Memoirs and Notes, volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 372

Not only that, but there was a title of nobility, the first that Peony or Dr. Planish had ever tasted, the Principessa Ca’ D’Oro, a real princess though she just happened to have been born a Miss Togg of Arkansas. She wrote social columns. But, nobler than nobility, bluer of jaw than the principessa was blue of blood, was Colonel Charles B. Marduc, deity among advertising agents, owner of a dozen magazines, major on the Western Front in World War I and now colonel in the National Guard; […] But Dr. Planish did see that only in New York could you adequately keep a national philanthropic organization. Where else could you count on generals and principessas and stars and Marducs and bishops of every brand from Roman Catholic through Methodist to Pentecostal Abyssinian?

1943, Sinclair Lewis, Gideon Planish, New York, N.Y.: Random House, pages 231–232

Professor Hartt recalled that, at one of what Berenson liked to call his Sunday afternoon “tea fights,” he was surrounded by contessas, baronessas, and principessas in true Don Giovanni style.

1979, Meryle Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, page 391

Inside, Italian principessas rubbed shoulders with Seventh Avenue princes.

1997, Sandra Marton, Until You, Pinnacle Books, page 88

Italian principessas were always there with publishers, playboys, and princes some of the habitués of the club mingling with starlets and socialites.

2009, Deedee Panesar, In Gold We Trust: The True Story of the Papalia Twins and Their Battle for Truth and Justice, Trafford Publishing, published 2010, page 68

I shoved Bee up another step, hoping she would bolt for the door to the attic, and I took each step down with a drawn-out measure worthy, I am sure, of the great principessas of the theater.

2010, Kate Elliott [pseudonym; Alis A. Rasmussen], Cold Magic (Spiritwalker; 1), Hachette

Before her marriage to the head of Fiat, she had been “just one of those-down-at-the-Ferragamo-heels Italian principessas playing at working in New York—in her case, in Erwin Blumenfeld’s studio. […]”

2017, Norma Stevens, Steven M. L. Aronson, Avedon: Something Personal, New York, N.Y.: Spiegel & Grau, page 46

Only imagine, the sisters had enthused to one another on the phone, they could sail the wine-dark seas like Italian principessas.

2018, Mary Jane Myers, Curious Affairs, Philadelphia, Pa.: Paul Dry Books, page 69