Meaning of Iron Lady | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A nickname given to various female leaders, indicating that they are strong-willed and unyielding.
2. A strong-willed and unrelenting female leader.
3. Margaret Thatcher.
   especially
4. The iron maiden at Nuremberg.
5. A sewing machine.
   archaic

Examples

“Known as the "Serbian Iron Lady" as a result of her hard-line nationalism and rabidly anti-Muslim views, Plavsic was a close ally of Radovan Karadzic.”

“(see title)”

“Like her husband, Simone—once called the Iron Lady and known for her fiery speeches—faced four counts of crimes against humanity for being an indirect co-perpetrator in murder, rape, and other sexual violence, as well as a range of other inhumane acts.”

“On the lawn of the White House, with the Iron Lady beside him, Reagan may have pledged that Britain and the USA would 'stand side by side' in defending freedom -- just so long as it was on US terms.”

“On 16 October 1998, twenty-five years after he left the presidential palace in Santiago to tell the world the story of the Chilean Revolution, Joan Garcés sent to the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón a petition asking for the urgent questioning of General Augusto Pinochet, who was preparing to leave London after a back operation and afternoon tea with his admirer, ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Over tea and scones, an older Pinochet told the Iron Lady that opinion polls predicted that Chile could have its first socialist president since 1973.”

“Using the metaphor of metalurgy he had deployed in the epic parliamentary debate at the start of the war, he rose at Prime Minister's Questions on 17 June to remind the House how he had predicted that the Falklands crisis should determine what metal the Iron Lady was made of.”

“In March 1981, she was put to the test for the first time: Bobby Sands (1954-1981), an Irish republican prisoner, and his comrades began a hunger strike in order to obtain the status of political prisoners, thus showing their desire to receive better treatment. But the Iron Lady remained unmoved and ignored their request.”

“As Mrs. Degen stoutly declared, those seeking German embraces would do well to remember the Iron Lady of Nuremberg.”

“The enterprising young reporter jubilantly began constructing a substantial iron net on the frail foundation of circumstantial evidence and that net began to close as tight as the Iron Lady of Nuremburg^([sic]) round Dean Cardigan.”

“Then it was arranged that I should do a short tour of the unspoilt medieval towns of northern Bavaria – Bamberg, Rothenburg and Nuremberg where I saw the original machine of torture, the 'Iron Lady', with its horrific spikes all pointing inwards from the metal shell.”

“The Iron Lady has iron spikes and I don't need holes for air-conditioning my body.”

“On the one hand, the patriarchal discourse constructs the identity of 'an iron lady' for the successful woman leader.”

“Stories about Biljana Plavsic also contain the monster narrative. Emphasis on her toughness and her nickname 'iron lady' hint at a monster characterization, but these images are much more obvious in the emphasis on the view that Plavsic is lacking in mental balance.”

“Del Ponte only takes the blame for the last incident, acknowledging that she realized too late that she had been played by the “iron lady” from Republica Srpska.”

“It tried one's nerves to look on the rack that had pulled men to pieces, on the "iron lady" which opened in front and then embraced and crushed her victim with sharp spikes, and on the sword that had cut off hundreds of heads.”

“In a castle dungeon in Nuremberg, Germany is a huge, medieval "iron lady" torture device. Shaped like a woman, the iron lady opens to reveal huge spikes, once used for torture and death.”

“But the best torture of all was the iron lady; it was a box in the shape of a lady sitting down.”

“In the delicate parts of work -- in those mysteries known to the erudite as flounces, gussets, frills, and tucks -- in the learned complications of the herringbone system, and the homely art of darning -- we imagine that the iron lady is not proficient.”

“But, the iron lady's needle is not like the instrument of a flesh and blood seamstress.”

“Not only thin materials, but Johnny's jeans and corduroys, which the old iron lady used to chew up and swallow and then just moan and die on.”

CEFR level