NOUN
- commonly cultivated Old World woody herb having large pinkish to red flowers
- 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')
- an elderly unmarried woman
- any of various plants of the genus Zinnia cultivated for their variously and brightly colored flower heads
How To Use old maid In A Sentence
- ‘Then again, some old maid's door will be slily fastened by tying tightly across the door jambs, in front of and to the ‘sneck’, a piece of wood to prevent her coming out of doors till released by a kind neighbour next morning.’
- This canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk. Archive 2008-12-01
- To him, a schoolmistress was a crusty Old Maid in a liberty bodice and lisle stockings.
- And when you consider that a lot of them, through ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how they cut down the period of teaching of the marriageable ones. CHAPTER II
- The state of old maidism was reached at a very early age in those early days; Higginson wrote of an "antient maid" of twenty-five years. Customs and Fashions in Old New England
- The game - sometimes with a game board, sometimes without - consisted of decks of lithographed cards on which were depicted comical or serious likenesses of women in pairs and a single ‘Old Maid.’
- As it is now, with all mandom to choose from, there are many, too many, old maids. Woman Her Sex and Love Life
- Today spinster suggests a rejected, dried-up "old maid," so much so that some single women are driven to adopt the ludicrous term bachelor girl to describe their status. VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XI No 1
- Dowager went off in her jingling old coach, attended by two faithful and withered old maids of honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in waiting, in a brown jasey and a green coat covered with orders — of which the star and the grand yellow cordon of the order of St. Michael of Pumpernickel were most conspicuous. Vanity Fair
- It's like being called a eunuch or an old maid; one always hears that faint sneer of disdain and condescension mixed with pity.
