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May queen

American  

noun

  1. a girl or young woman crowned with flowers and honored as queen in the festivities of May Day.


May queen British  

noun

  1. a girl chosen, esp for her beauty, to preside over May-Day celebrations

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Social life, whether it was the crowning of a May queen, the eulogy to a dead president, or an all-night dance, could be held nowhere else.

From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

Festivities of various sorts were held on this early playground, always a May day celebration with its Maypole dance and its May queen.

From Twenty Years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes by Addams, Jane

A May queen was decreed "too old"; a May masque too much trouble.

From Betty Wales, Sophomore by Warde, Margaret

But the persistent place given to the May queen rather than to the king suggests the earlier prominence of women and of female spirits of fertility or of a great Mother-goddess in such rites.

From The Religion of the Ancient Celts by MacCulloch, J. A.

Alice, a bright-eyed, merry child, was chosen May queen, and, being afraid she might oversleep herself, told her mother to be sure to call her early.

From Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 by Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham