Definition of "unschoolmarmish"
unschoolmarmish
adjective
comparative more unschoolmarmish, superlative most unschoolmarmish
Quotations
A young man on Minnesota Street and one of the lady teachers in one of the public schools not far from Cass Avenue, having concluded that a consolidation of their joys and sorrows would lead to their mutual advantage, resolved that upon the 17th day of July, 1878, at 8 o’clock in the evening, they would be joined in holy wedlock. […] The young man didn’t know a license was necessary. He begged the minister to go on. The minister respected the majesty of the law and refused. The bride burst into very un[-]school-marmish tears; she sobbed and prayed the hard-hearted clergyman to look upon that wedding outfit and complete the ceremony.
1878 July 27, “A Marriage that Didn’t Come Off”, in The Iola Register, volume XII, number 31, Iola, Kan., front page, column 6
So now, stimulated by some further experience with that world which does not care a tinker's damn whether a verb agrees with its subject in number and person or not, she permitted the taxicab to jounce her smile out of all semblance to anything calmly superior and into a very unschoolmarmish grin.
1921, Harvey Wickham, “Introducing the Garden of Eden”, in The Clue of the Primrose Petal, New York, N.Y.: Edward J. Clode, page 9
He is attracted to an unschoolmarmish schoolmistress, but cannot settle down to Ireland.
1938 April 29, John Brophy, “Books of the Day: New Fiction: Three Irish Novels”, in The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, number 25,868 Daily Telegraph / 51,739 Morning Post, London, section “Miss Kate O’Brien”, page 22
Alma is an experienced teacher from Manitoba, here for a Refresher Course. She readily fitted into the activities of the School. Many times she added her apt, unschoolmarmish comments to impromptu discussions.
1939, Anecho: The Yearly Publication of the Provincial Normal School, Victoria, B.C., page 6
We tiptoed backstage in search of our second grader and found Mrs. Brown, who handles second graders with humor and affection, leaning against a packing case muffling a hearty case of un[-]school-marmish hysterics.
1946 December 2, Celestine Sibley, “Relentless Approach Of Christmas Things”, in The Atlanta Constitution, volume LXXIX, number 170, Atlanta, Ga., page 7
Attractive Miss Dawn Mackay, formerly a dancing teacher, who received the controversial appointment as headmistress at Heathfield, Britain’s top girls’ school, has finally spoken out in reply to her critics. […] A soft-voiced, well-groomed decidedly unschoolmarmish Scot, the 32-year-old willow-slim Miss Mackay admits she, too, thought the idea of her appointment a little odd at first.
1962 April 15, “Reply from a Headmistress”, in The Sun-Herald, Sydney, N.S.W., page 106
[…] not only an authoritative pedagogue in the distillation of the . . arpeggios and acciaccaturas . . is the ever sweet singer of songs ANNE VAJDA . . whose “unschool-marmish” looks . . make her a very popular member of our local academy of higher learning […]
1962 December 11, The Bakersfield Californian, volume 76, number 114, Bakersfield, Calif., page 2, column 1
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)—let us say it baldly—was not only one of the greatest journalists who ever lived but also one of the best writers of American prose of his time and just conceivably in our whole history. The judgment can stand only if our canons are non-academic. Mencken was impolite, noisy, and unschoolmarmish. He used exaggeration, vituperation, catch-as-catch-can epithets, slang, facetious Teutonisms, facetious Latinisms, sesquipedalian jocularity. Fowler would have execrated him. Any professor would.
1965, Clifton Fadiman, “Commentary”, in Fifty Years: Being a Retrospective Collection of Novels, Novellas, Tales, Drama, Poetry, and Reportage and Essays (Whether Literary, Musical, Contemplative, Historical, Biographical, Argumentative, or Gastronomical); All Drawn from Volumes Issued during the Last Half-Century by Alfred and Blanche Knopf Over This Sign and Device, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, section “Reportage and Essays”, page 717
The door opened, and there stood Miss Ellerby, looking as Miss Ellerby should, unschoolmarmish and casually chic in a silky shirt, faded jeans, and running shoes.
1986, E. N. Welch, “Just an Unofficial Investigation”, in Cynthia Manson, editor, Murder on Main Street: Small-Town Crime from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine & Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, New York, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble Books, published 1993, page 238
When she was barely 20, my mother collected her college degree and, remarkably in the South of the early 1920s, moved hundreds of miles to become a schoolmarm (a very lively and un-schoolmarmish one I am sure) in North Carolina.
1990 May 11, Edwin M. Yoder Jr., “Protest terribly patronizing”, in The State, 99th year, number 131, Columbia, S.C., page 19-A, column 1
Little Gottfried is waving a building brick under my nose and saying, ‘Aunt Miesenmaus, Goffi write to Uncle Dietrich too!’ – so I keep having to break off and be auntishly unschoolmarmish. I don’t think any aunt has ever been so besotted with her nephew. I wish I could bring him to see you some time.
1994, Maria von Wedemeyer, translated by John Brownjohn, edited by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz, Love Letters from Cell 92: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Maria Von Wedemeyer, 1943-1945, HarperCollinsPublishers, page 92
Mitch knew he was supposed to be impressing Bradenton’s cool and collected lady president, but the pity he’d seen in her eyes at first meeting had gotten his back up before she’d even opened that very unschoolmarmish mouth of hers.
1995, Paula Detmer Riggs, Her Secret, His Child, Silhouette Books, page 34