maid

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   An adult or adolescent female servant or cleaner (short for maidservant). (In feudal times this could be anyone from a high-ranking assistant to a low-ranking cleaner.)

   She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid,[…]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.

2. 2
   noun

   A virgin, now female but originally one of either gender.

   You are betrothed both to a maid and man.

3. 3
   verb

   To serve as lady's maid to, to wait upon.

   And as she did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had maided a dear old lady.

4. 4
   noun

   an unmarried girl (especially a virgin)

From Middle English mayde, maide, abbreviation of Middle English maiden from Old English mæġden (Old English mǣden). Ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *magaþ, from Proto-Germanic *magaþs (“girl, virgin”).

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images