old maid

American  

noun

1. Disparaging and Offensive. an elderly or confirmed spinster.

2. a fussy, timid, prudish person.

3. Cards.

   1. a simple game, played with a deck having one card removed, in which the players draw from one another to match pairs and the one holding an odd queen at the end loses.

   2. the loser of such a game.

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old maid British  

noun

1. a woman regarded as unlikely ever to marry; spinster

2. informal a prim, fastidious, or excessively cautious person

3. a card game using a pack from which one card has been removed, in which players try to avoid holding the unpaired card at the end of the game

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Sensitive Note

The meaning “a spinster” is used with disparaging intent and perceived as insulting. It puts emphasis on the woman’s advanced age and assumed inability to ever attract a husband. See also spinster.

Other Word Forms

• old-maidish adjective

Etymology

Origin of old maid

First recorded in 1520–30

Example Sentences

If they chance upon the foul water, they are set to marry a widow or widower and if they choose the empty dish "the person is destined to be a bachelor or an old maid".

From Salon • Oct. 30, 2023

Writers and painters began to depict Elizabeth as a preposterous and vain old maid.

From Slate • Dec. 6, 2018

Still, we suspect that she is a sad case, a solitary old maid gabbing to her niece about happier times.

From The New Yorker • May 1, 2017

Estela considers herself a fat, hopeless old maid, while Rosali diets herself into a swoon to reach size zero.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 15, 2015

The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid.

From "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen