What's the difference between maiden and spinster?

Maiden


Definition:

  • (n.) An unmarried woman; a girl or woman who has not experienced sexual intercourse; a virgin; a maid.
  • (n.) A female servant.
  • (n.) An instrument resembling the guillotine, formerly used in Scotland for beheading criminals.
  • (n.) A machine for washing linen.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a maiden, or to maidens; suitable to, or characteristic of, a virgin; as, maiden innocence.
  • (a.) Never having been married; not having had sexual intercourse; virgin; -- said usually of the woman, but sometimes of the man; as, a maiden aunt.
  • (a.) Fresh; innocent; unpolluted; pure; hitherto unused.
  • (a.) Used of a fortress, signifying that it has never been captured, or violated.
  • (v. t.) To act coyly like a maiden; -- with it as an indefinite object.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her maiden speech in parliament celebrated the diversity of her beloved Yorkshire constituency, and passionately made the case that there is more that unites us than divides us.
  • (2) In case you've managed to avoid gatherings where it's been discussed (which is a long shot, but perhaps your friends are hard, angry, silent drinkers, in which case, you've got lucky), this involves combining the name of your first pet with your mother's maiden name to create the pseudonym you'd use if you were a porn star.
  • (3) Restricted franchise in EU referendum would make a mockery of democracy | Letters Read more My own interest in this matter goes back many years – including devoting my maiden speech in the House of Commons in 2001 to the case for lowering the voting age to 16 across the board.
  • (4) Breakthrough as US and China agree to ratify Paris climate deal Read more The prime minister used her maiden speech at the United Nations in New York to say the UK remained determined to “play our part in the international effort against climate change … In a demonstration of our commitment to the agreement reached in Paris, the UK will start its domestic procedures to enable ratification of the Paris agreement and complete these before the end of the year,” she said.
  • (5) Experiences in practice in an area with a high infection rate have shown an obvious protection in 700 maiden heifers.
  • (6) Search options include an individual veteran's name (either maiden or married) and section, location or building choices.
  • (7) He is the third major summer recruit for Bilic before West Ham’s maiden season at the Olympic Stadium following the arrivals of the midfielder Havard Nordtveit and the Algerian international winger Sofiane Feghouli .
  • (8) That's been good for small towns like Maiden, which has sold itself to tech companies as a "data centre corridor" by offering cheap electricity.
  • (9) It prompted him to field nine changes, giving debuts to Seb Lletget, Danny Whitehead and Callum Driver, with George Moncur making a maiden start.
  • (10) He joined the upper house and made his maiden speech, another clue to the future Cantuar.
  • (11) After the wedding, she found herself at the receiving end of good ol’ southern disapproval when she decided to keep her maiden name – an act that was seen as virtually seditious in unreconstructed 1970s Arkansas.
  • (12) • You can invest in a co-operative formed to help finance the restoration and regeneration of Unity Hall in Wakefield , which, during its lifetime, has hosted everything from silent movies to gigs by Bauhaus, Captain Beefheart, the Human League and Iron Maiden, among others.
  • (13) Talking og maidens, here's Ravi Nair confiding in us: "You asked for our worst defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory stories so maybe this'll make you feel better.
  • (14) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mhairi Black gives her maiden speech Students and other young people on Twitter and Tumblr said they were inspired by Black’s age and example.
  • (15) Murray earned $1.9m (£1.1m) for his maiden major victory to go with career earnings of $21.5m (£13.4m) and is worth £24m through endorsements and prize-money; Perry turned pro after beating Budge and made much more through his famous shirts than he ever did with a tennis racket.
  • (16) Between 1982 and 1985, 1015 mares were evaluated using the following parameters: age, mare status (maiden, barren, lactating), Caslick index, Caslick operation, ovarian cycle, ovarian and follicular size, treatments (hCG and intrauterine infusions), number of ovulations after mating (184 mares), number of conceptuses present, dimensions of embryonic vesicles, and pregnancy status 45 days after mating.
  • (17) Nine galleries narrate the tale, from context-setting in boomtown early 1900s Belfast, through construction and fitting-out, all the way to the launch and catastrophic maiden voyage.
  • (18) The brothers moved in different circles; the elder is a self-confessed “metalhead” who had been to the Manchester arena to watch Iron Maiden a week before Martyn – a Coronation Street superfan described by one friend as a “one-man hen party” – went to see Ariana Grande.
  • (19) Grainge was bullish that the enforced asset sale – which will include EMI operations in nine European countries and labels such as Chrysalis, Mute and Sanctuary, home to artists including Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and Iron Maiden respectively – will draw premium bids and that Universal will not lose out by offloading them.
  • (20) Tracing would be easier and less expensive if standard identifying information, including maiden name, social security number, and date of birth, were included in the medical records for all women.

Spinster


Definition:

  • (n.) A woman who spins, or whose occupation is to spin.
  • (n.) A man who spins.
  • (n.) An unmarried or single woman; -- used in legal proceedings as a title, or addition to the surname.
  • (n.) A woman of evil life and character; -- so called from being forced to spin in a house of correction.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At one point, Walters speculates that “she looks the same weight as the Duchess – about 8st”; later, he disingenuously asks her to discuss “the cruel comments about being a ‘childless spinster’”, neither telling readers who made those “cruel comments” in the first place, or where.
  • (2) Lise is a lonely and strange spinster who will soon be murdered.
  • (3) • Petra's spinster landladies added caraway seeds to their mix.
  • (4) Your little country will forever be honoured as the site that made the Princess Diana thing look like a restrained wake for a loathed spinster who perished alone on a desert island.
  • (5) And, of course, in 1961 she published The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, her legendary tale of the Edinburgh spinster schoolteacher who devotes her middle years to her "gerrils", to Mussolini and to having illicit sex.
  • (6) "In the same way as the first Bridget book was looking at the way a 30-something single woman was branded as a tragic spinster, and then we got the new idea of a singleton, [the new book] will be looking at later phases in life when you get branded as a certain thing," she said, "and you don't have to be that at all and it's all outdated and ridiculous.
  • (7) Today the unruly hair, bushy eyebrows and spinster image that for so long attracted cruel teasing, especially from young children, are set to be the passport to her undoubted future success.
  • (8) A 69-year-old spinster presented with a history of generalised bone pains in September 1977.
  • (9) The Brontës are shown, with understated relish, as lonely, half-mad spinsters, surrounded by insufferable yokels and the unmentionable stench of death.
  • (10) St Paul's Girls' School, where I enjoyed the lessons of the English teacher Miss Jenkinson but little else, was a grim institution in the early 1950s - more Brontë than Austen - and the little piece of ivory on which the celebrated spinster wrote her tales of love and disappointment and sudden, unconvincing happiness, didn't mean anything to me.
  • (11) She stares at a fire, sitting spinster straight, stiff with grief.
  • (12) She had digs in Upper Leeson Street with two spinster sisters whose culinary repertoire was somewhat limited.
  • (13) As she neared 50, and stayed resolute about acting her age, Hepburn was the schoolteacher plunged into late love in Venice, in David Lean's Summer Madness (1955), a spinster refreshed by Burt Lancaster in The Rainmaker (1956), and a very creepy monster mother in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).
  • (14) She might have stitched the whole thing in front of her hissing gas fire, with her brass ornaments twinkling in the background, Corrie playing on the telly and The Hay Wain over the fireplace.” Perry flirts with John Major territory – “cricket on the village green” makes an appearance among Perry’s aggregation of words and phrases that seem to him to express Britishness – but it is too sly to fall for the whole warm beer and cycling spinsters schtick.
  • (15) He also shows how cartoons formed the backbone of the anti-suffrage movement, caricaturing suffragettes as monstrous spinsters.
  • (16) Singledom in women is usually presented as a failure to achieve the ideal of wife and mother: single women are haunted by nasty words such as "spinster" and must contend with caricatures of lonely women who are lost without a man to define them .
  • (17) It seemed the only way I could face Christmas without my own family and not feel like the tragic spinster aunt for whom everyone feels a bit sorry (I cannot bear pity, and Christmas has brought out the dreaded head tilt in even the most well-intentioned loved ones).
  • (18) In 1811 Mary Reynolds, a somber Pennsylvania spinster, awoke from a prolonged sleep as a new personality.
  • (19) Jane Austen scholar Dr Paula Byrne claims to have discovered a lost portrait of the author which, far from depicting a grumpy spinster, shows a writer at the height of her powers and a woman comfortable in her own skin.
  • (20) So, what better high note to end an extraordinary week, one that has seen the 47-year-old Scottish singing spinster win plaudits from around the world, than the prospect of a duet with her heroine, Elaine Paige?