heroine

noun

1. A female hero.
2. A female lead character.

   “Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.”

   “'I infer that you are the lady of the paragraph,' and the lifted hand indicated the open sheet of the Record lying nearby. […] 'Oh,' said Mr Carrados with an amused and deepening interest, 'so in addition to being the heroine of the adventure you wrote it up?'”

3. (alt-of, obsolete, uncountable)Obsolete spelling of heroin.

   “[…] 1,451 ounces of heroine hydrochloride, and 19 ounces of codeine — the equivalent of 16,273 pounds of opium.”

   “No manufacture of heroine is lawful in the United States of America, but it is permitted in some countries under the same conditions as for other narcotics under international control.”

adj

1. (not-comparable, rare)Characteristic of a heroine; heroic.

   “Theoxena to free hir Siſters children and hir owne from the laſciuious embraces of King Phillip, put weapons into their weaker hands, and perſwaded them Vt imminens ludibrium morte effugerent; to reſcue themſelues by Death from imminent diſgrace, wherein ſhe had no ſooner preuailed, but with a heroine reſolution ſhe ſhewed them by hir owne example, that what ſhee had taught them, was eaſie to be done.”

   “Her Brows ſoft Fur was of a paler Dye, / Conformable to that which prettily / Peep’d on her upper Lip, and cowardly / Made shew of Heroine Virility.”

   “I had once more prevailed on Mrs. Eſten to try her York friends; ſhe rather wiſhed to avoid the hazard, as ſhe rightly judged ſhe had been treated ſo very negligently, after a profuſion of praiſe and promiſe; however from my ſolicitation ſhe did break through her heroine reſolution, and once more on her return from Scotland ventured her little bark to the generoſity and pleaſure of her profeſſed friends at York.”

   “How otherwise than by a violation of a pledge could he have conquered Limerick, protected as it then was by the heroine bravery of its defenders.”