1873 29 Oct. There was the tall schoolmarmy Mrs. Livermore, the president, on the jump all the while, interrupting the ‘papers’ to request ‘those ladies to be immediately seated’.
1941 10 115 The priggishness of the book [sc. Mansfield Park] is of a special kind, not just the occasional schoolmarmy effects of Sense and Sensibility.
2001 C. Benard 256 She hopes that Cleo will not remember her that way, as a humorless tedious schoolmarmy nag.