spinster

American  

[spin-ster] / ˈspɪn stər /

noun

• spinsters
  plural

1. Disparaging and Offensive. a woman still unmarried beyond the usual age of marrying.

2. Chiefly Law. a woman who has never married.

3. a woman whose occupation is spinning.

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spinster British  

/ ˈspɪnstə /

noun

1. an unmarried woman regarded as being beyond the age of marriage

2. law (in legal documents) a woman who has never married Compare feme sole

3. (formerly) a woman who spins thread for her living

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Sensitive Note

The meaning “a woman beyond the usual marriageable age” is used with disparaging intent and perceived as insulting. It implies negative qualities such as being fussy or undesirable. See also old maid.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• spinsterhood
  noun
• spinsterish
  adjective
• spinsterlike
  adjective
• spinsterishly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• spinsters
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of spinster

1325–75; Middle English spinnestere a woman who spins. See spin, -ster

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Explanation

A spinster is an older, unmarried woman. Even if you're in awe of your Aunt Sally's glamorous, single life, your grandmother might dismiss her as a spinster. Spinster originally meant "a spinner of thread," and as that was a job typically done by unmarried women, it came to have the meaning — even in legal documents — of "single woman." Another term for spinster is the equally old-fashioned sounding old maid. Either way, it means a woman who never got married. Spinster is not a word you should call anyone: it reduces single women to one detail about their lives.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

spinster spinsters

But she brushed off the barbs, saying: "I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell."

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026

French-American author Lauren Elkin, who writes on art and culture, said a mythology pervaded that she was "this reclusive spinster that never left her house and lived at home with her cat making her paintings".

From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2026

“I’m a geriatric pregnant spinster who puts crystals in her bra,” Helen says in an unusual moment of self-awareness.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025

"Look at me," she declares to her spinster daughters in one scene.

From Salon ● May 6, 2023

To many people the very word conjures up memories of choking on chalk dust and cowering in fear of a thwack on the knuckles from a spinster schoolteacher.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

As her New York Times obituary put it, “She specialized in sourness, or, more politely, acerbity, which she used to her comic advantage in roles as housekeepers, spinsters, wicked stepmothers, nuns and back-talking secretaries.”

From Slate ● Aug. 16, 2019

He would like to see the two take up the approved life of spinsters.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 14, 2018

Considered spinsters back East, both Curtis and Stanley married younger men out West.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2015

Southern belles, frustrated spinsters, power-hungry TV execs, nuns, clergymen and even kings and queens.

From BBC ● Feb. 25, 2012

How could we have guessed as we sat there—two middle-aged spinsters and an old man— that in place of memories were about to be given adventures such as we had never dreamed of?

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom

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