papess means A female pope, i.e. the fictitious Pope Joan. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
PAPESS — [Noun] A legendary female pope, most often identified with the apocryphal figure of Pope Joan. From the French papesse, from the Latin pāpa ("pope, father") with the feminine suffix -essa. Unlike "popess" (its direct but prosaic English counterpart) or "High Priestess" (which evokes pagan rites and esoteric mysteries), "papess" evokes a specific, heretical vacancy within the rigid architecture of the Roman Church. She is the illicit rustle of robes beneath pontifical vestments, the phantom vote in a conclave of sworn celibates, the sudden, scandalous silence in an unbroken apostolic chronicle—a word that is less a title than a haunting, the ghost of an alternative history that never was.
noun
- A female pope, i.e. the fictitious Pope Joan.“Was the history of that their monstrous Papess of our making?”