OLD MAID • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Old maid

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/oʊld meɪd/ Listen

Old maid

noun

An elderly unmarried woman. Synonym: spinster.

Any of various plants of the genus Zinnia cultivated for their variously and brightly colored flower heads. Synonyms: old maid flower, zinnia.

Commonly cultivated Old World woody herb having large pinkish to red flowers. Synonyms: Cape periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus, cayenne jasmine, Madagascar periwinkle, periwinkle, red periwinkle, rose periwinkle, Vinca rosea.

The loser in a game of old maid.

A card game using a pack of cards from which one queen has been removed; players match cards and the player holding the unmatched queen at the end of the game is the loser (or 'old maid').

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"Old maid" Quotes from Famous Books

... grieving, child," she said; "I'm only realizing what a selfish old maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to myself. Harry, ...

— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the priest Ali-bo-babem was called out of his bed, and found at the door, desiring to be married, the crabbed old bachelor and the cross old maid. These two did not live long, but all the rest of the people were ...

— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. She felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own—he would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she discriminated; it did lead to something ...

— The Reverberator • Henry James

... evening. Frank Miller, bold and bad as he was looked crestfallen and uneasy. Some who appeared to be more careful of the manners of society than its morals, said that I was very rude. Others said that I was too prudish, and would be an old maid, that I was looking for perfection in young men, and would not find it. That young men sow their wild oats, and that I was more nice than wise, and that I would frighten the gentlemen away from me. I told them if the young men were so easily ...

— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... Welland had said proudly of her future son-in-law; and old Mrs. Mingott, who had summoned him for a confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and added impatiently: "Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense it was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott and an old maid, when she has the luck to be a married ...

— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

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