Virago (pronounced vi-rah-goh (U) or vi-rey-goh (non-U))
(1) A loud-voiced, ill-tempered, scolding woman; shrew.
(2) A woman of strength or spirit; strong, brave, or warlike; an amazon.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English from the Old English, from the Latin virāgō (man-like maiden (in the sense of "female warrior, heroine, amazon"), the construct being vir (man) (from the primitive Indo-European root wi-ro (man)) + -āgō (the Latin suffix expressing association of some kind, in this case resemblance). By the late fourteenth century, the meaning had absorbed the additional meaning of "heroic woman, woman of extraordinary stature, strength and courage" the sense again from the Latin vir (from which is derived virile) rather than being masculine in appearance. The adjectival sense viraginous is now rare; virago-like the preferred form.
English gained the word from Ælfric of Eynsham (circa 995-circa 1010; Ælfrīc the Old English, his name rendered also in the Medieval Latin as Alfricus or Elphricus) an English abbot who proved the most prolific writer in Old English of biblical scholarship, devotional hagiography, homilies and notes on Church law. Between 990-994, following the structures of the Vulgate Bible, he constructed The Homilies of Ælfric (also published as The Sermones Catholici), translating the Pentateuch and Joshua in 997-998, providing what was then a modern gloss of the name Adam gave to Eve in Genesis II:23: Beo hire nama Uirago, þæt is, fæmne, forðan ðe heo is of hire were genumen (Let her name be Virago, that is woman, because she is taken from man) which is rendered (Genesis II 21:23) in the more familiar King James Version (KJV (1611)) as:
21: And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22: And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23: And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
In Antiquity, virago had positive associations, the implication being that a woman who proved herself especially strong or valorous could be called a virago because she had proved herself somehow as worthy as a man (something like the "honorary white" status the Apartheid regime in South Africa would grant Maori members of touring All Black rugby teams). The idea is acknowledged in modern dictionaries which usually contain and entry in the spirit of "a woman noted for her stature, strength and courage" but add also "a woman thought loud or overbearing; a shrew" and linguists note the latter definition is now the one most followed, the word long applied in the negative although the Royal Navy sticks to the classics, the Admiralty having named several warships HMS Virago.
Viraginous, one way or another: Lindsay Lohan lights up (The Canyons (2013)).
Established by Australian Dame Carmen Callil (1938–2022) in 1972-1973 (originally under the name Spare Rib Books, the name borrowed from a magazine associated with second-wave feminism), Virago Press was created to focus on the work of women authors or work which focused on aspects of women’s experience ignored by most (mostly male) historians. Dame Carmen probably had the classical meaning of virago in mind but it’s suspected she also didn’t object to notions of assertiveness or outright bolshieness. Virago had an undisguised political agenda but, unlike many of the aggregations in the field which over decades had come and gone, it was always structured as a conventional publishing house, run on much the same commercial basis as other imprints. From the start there was a focus of new work but the creation of a list was assisted greatly by what turned out to be an the extraordinary back-catalog of out-of-print books by neglected female writers, these issued under Virago’s "Modern Classics" insignia and trawling the records from the 1930s and 1940s provided a rich vein of neglected fiction by women. Publishing is an unforgiving, cutthroat business and Virago has over the decades shunted between various corporations and is currently part of the French publishing conglomerate Hachette Livre, its output still prolific.
Known since the late 1160s, virago sleeves became fashionable for women early in the seventeenth century. Seamstresses describe the construction as "full-paned" or "full-pansied" (ie made of strips of fabric gathered into two puffs by a ribbon or fabric band above the elbow). The adoption of the name virago is thought an allusion to armor may have worn in combat to assist them in the slaughter of men.
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