"steel magnolia" meaning in English

See steel magnolia in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: steel magnolias [plural]
Etymology: * Combining the contrasting images of steel, a hard metal, and magnolia, a flower. Head templates: {{en-noun}} steel magnolia (plural steel magnolias)
  1. (chiefly Southern US) A woman, unashamed, who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude. Tags: Southern-US
    Sense id: en-steel_magnolia-en-noun-0kP7pLWg Categories (other): Southern US English

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for steel magnolia meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "* Combining the contrasting images of steel, a hard metal, and magnolia, a flower.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "steel magnolias",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "steel magnolia (plural steel magnolias)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Southern US English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983, Roland Bartel, Metaphors and symbols: Forays into Language, National Council of Teachers of English, page 48",
          "text": "Reporters called Nancy Reagan an iron butterfly and Rosalind Carter a steel magnolia.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, John Berendt (introduction), The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, Random House, Inc., page xv",
          "text": "Ms. Deen is an irresistible example of that extraordinary phenomenon of Southern womanhood, the steel magnolia. She is always appealing and gracious but possessed of an unfailing survival instinct — a necessary character trait for a Southern cook to make it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Nancy Haddock, Last Vampire Standing, Penguin Group, page 111",
          "text": "\"That's how Candy refers to herself to make the vamps think she's just a little Southern belle.\"\n\"When she's really a steel magnolia?\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman, unashamed, who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude."
      ],
      "id": "en-steel_magnolia-en-noun-0kP7pLWg",
      "links": [
        [
          "femininity",
          "femininity"
        ],
        [
          "fortitude",
          "fortitude"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly Southern US) A woman, unashamed, who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Southern-US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "steel magnolia"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "* Combining the contrasting images of steel, a hard metal, and magnolia, a flower.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "steel magnolias",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "steel magnolia (plural steel magnolias)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Southern US English"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983, Roland Bartel, Metaphors and symbols: Forays into Language, National Council of Teachers of English, page 48",
          "text": "Reporters called Nancy Reagan an iron butterfly and Rosalind Carter a steel magnolia.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, John Berendt (introduction), The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, Random House, Inc., page xv",
          "text": "Ms. Deen is an irresistible example of that extraordinary phenomenon of Southern womanhood, the steel magnolia. She is always appealing and gracious but possessed of an unfailing survival instinct — a necessary character trait for a Southern cook to make it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Nancy Haddock, Last Vampire Standing, Penguin Group, page 111",
          "text": "\"That's how Candy refers to herself to make the vamps think she's just a little Southern belle.\"\n\"When she's really a steel magnolia?\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman, unashamed, who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "femininity",
          "femininity"
        ],
        [
          "fortitude",
          "fortitude"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly Southern US) A woman, unashamed, who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Southern-US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "steel magnolia"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.