[f. WORK sb. + MISTRESS, after prec.] A woman who controls or superintends work: only fig., chiefly of Nature (personified).

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1568.  Hacket, trans. Thevet’s New found World, lxviii. 108 b. Nature the great workemistresse.

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1603.  Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 337. I assure you Venus is the work-mistresse of mutuall concord.

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a. 1635.  Naunton, Fragm. Reg. (Arb.), 60. God,… by an evident manifestation, that the same work which she acted, was a well-pleasing service of his own … had decreed the protection of the work-Mistresse.

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1675.  A. Browne, Appendix Art Paint., 22. Since Nature, that Cunning Work-Mistress, is so extremely Various in her Representations.

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1877.  J. E. Carpenter, trans. Tiele’s Outl. Hist. Relig., 224. Athena, the goddess of art, the ‘workmistress’ (Ergané).

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