The article examines meanings of nouns relating to female persons that were in use in 19th and 20th centuries and are still encountered nowadays but are rarely included in dictionaries.

Female derivatives that were in use in 19th century and earlier are usually supplied with the meaning ‘wife of the person indicated by the producing word’, e.g. general'sha – ‘general’s wife’, doktorsha – ‘doctor’s wife’, even though widows of generals, majors and marshals of nobility were still called general'sha, mayorsha and predvoditel'sha.

In colloquial speech and literary language the meaning ‘widow’ did not necessary apply widows of officials.

The authors investigated usages of soldatka (‘soldier’s wife or widow’) and uncovered ideological motives that explain the presence of the meaning ‘widow’ in explanatory dictionaries.

The meaning ‘daughter’ is often combined with the meaning ‘wife’ when we look at nouns that relate to female persons. However, in Russian dictionaries (only in the Great Academic Dictionary and the Small Academic Dictionary) such a combination is recorded only for words baronessa [baroness], grafinya [countess], gertsoginya [duchess] and, somewhat unexpectedly, mel'nichikha (‘miller’s daughter or wife’).

This work represents a fragment of the general problem of how words and their meanings should be reflected in dictionaries – both in colloquial speech and literary language.