executrix

noun

1. (archaic, rare)A female person who executes or carries out something.

   “My deere he ſayes, vvho vnder golden haire / And vvith a looke ſo delicate in ſhovv, / Doth aged vvit, and manly ſtomacke beare: / […] / VVeaue thou the vveb begun by my deuice, / Of vvarie age as bold executrice. // Goe to the en'mies Campe, and there employ / Ech vvomans vvile, vvhich loue may ſerue to flocke, […]”

   “[A]s for Paracelſus his conceit that Giants and Nymphs vvere artificially born, that he ſayes is falſe: For the firſt ought to be born vvithout humane Art: and that they uſed Art to the generation of men, and not Nature ſeems uncertain & falſ, unleſſe the intelligences, the executrices of Gods providence have uſed this Art in ſome Region; […]”

2. (specifically)A female person appointed to execute the wishes of a deceased person as stated in their will; a female executor.

   “And fewe [wives] there be that be not made at the death of their huſbandes either ſole or chiefe executrixes of his laſt wil and teſtament, and haue for the moſt part the gouernement of the children and their portions: […]”

   “A female […] at ſeventeen may be executrix; and at tvventy one may diſpoſe of herſelf and her lands.”

   “[S]he is an executrix, and she likes to go into these things—property, land, that kind of thing.”

   “His widow, Painter Georgia O'Keeffe, has carried on his educational work as executrix of his will by dividing [Alfred] Stieglitz' brilliant art collection and his own even more brilliant photographs among six widely spaced institutions: […]”

   “One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity […]”