Home › Words › G › griseldagriseldagriselda · name — the long-suffering wife of a nobleman in a medieval tale.Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).EtymologyFrom the Old English elements *grīs (“gray”) + hild (“battle”), meaning “gray battle-maid”.nameThe long-suffering wife of a nobleman in a medieval tale.A female given name from the Germanic languages used in Middle Ages, but rather rare today.nounA woman of exemplary gentleness and patience.e.g.“Husbands, be not so hardy as to assail The patience of your wives in hope to find Griseldas, for you certainly will fail.” — 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, “Chaucer's Envoy to the Clerk's Tale”, in Nevill Coghill, transl., The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977:Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).