schoolmarm

1. (US, slang) A female teacher, especially one seen to be old-fashioned and extremely severe and strict.Examples: "The schoolmarm came to an abrupt stop in her arithmetic quizzing, her face set into a pruny scowl that looked to be permanent."; "I never thought of [my granfather] as "colorful." Matter of fact, he was an unsavory old coot - not a good influence for a growing boy by the standards of those times. Mmm, there was something about a young schoolmarm and him in the town my family had lived in, some scandal - "scandal" for those days, I mean - and I think that was why we moved."USslang

2. (by extension) Someone who acts like a schoolmarm; a person acting harsh and stern.Examples: "Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced hypocrite? Am I a New England school marm?"broadly

3. (forestry) A tree with two or more trunks; a forked tree.Examples: "His brother Thomas, impaled upon the "schoolmarm tree," had opened his mouth to cry but snow and wind hurled back the words into his throat so that nothing emerges but white froth."