Definition of "termagant"

[...] Make feeble ladies, in their works, / To fight like termagants and Turks; [...]

1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 2

The name of Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, has become proverbial for a termagant.

1907, Isaac Flagg, Plato: the Apology and Crito, page 196

Easier divorce, equal pay for equal work as between men and women, no discrimination between the sexes in employment – these were her causes, and in promoting them she was no comic-strip feminist termagant, but reasonable, logical, and untiring.

1970, Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

At first the General tried to impose silence upon the terrible termagant: but he soon discovered that he was powerless

1903, [unknown translator], Monsieur Lecoq (originally by Émile Gaboriau)

The slave of an imperious and reckless termagant.

1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 15, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans

"Mrs Kane has been filling us in on some background information on Owen." The woman nodded, drumming her nicotined fingers. "And I have been assuring her that the boys who arrive here thimbleriggers and termagants are the least of our worries. But we do not send them out that way. Do we, Brother?"

1980, Bernard MacLaverty, 'Lamb' (novel), (Chapter 6, at page 50 in the 1981 King Penguin paperback edition)

The Eldeſt vvas a termagant, imperious, prodigal, levvd, profligate VVench, as ever breath'd; ſhe uſed to Rantipole about the Houſe, pinch the Children, kick the Servants, and torture the Cats and Dogs; […]

1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “How the Guardians of the Deceas’d Mrs. Bull’s Three Daughters Came to John, and what Advice they Gave Him; wherein is Briefly Treated the Charactersof the Three Daughters: Also John Bull’s Answer to the Three Guardians”, in John Bull in His Senses: Being the Second Part of Law is a Bottomless-Pit. […], Edinburgh: […] James Watson, […], page 21

These bishops with their termagant wives throw the book at us and say believe because I demand belief and by God I will burn or hang and quarter you if you do not.

1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford