Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An unmarried girl or woman.
- n. A virgin.
- n. A woman servant.
- n. A housemaid or chambermaid.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A young unmarried woman; a girl; specifically, a girl of marriageable age, but applied, usually with little or some other qualifying term, to a female child of any age above infancy: as, a maid, or a little maid, of ten summers.
- n. A woman, especially a young woman, who has preserved her virginity; a virgin.
- n. A man who has always remained continent.
- n. A female servant or attendant charged with domestic duties: usually with a specific designation, as a housemaid, chambermaid, nurse-maid, a maid of all work, etc. See the compounds, and phrases below.
- n. One of various fishes. The female of several species of skate.
- n. The thornback ray. Also called maiden and maidenskate.
- n. The twait-shad.
- n. The wryneck, Iynx torquilla.
- n. A sort of cheesecake.
- n. A game of cards played by any number of persons with a pack of fifty-one cards, one of the queens being thrown out; all cards that match are discarded, and that player in whose hand the odd queen is finally left is said to be caught, and doomed to be an old maid (or bachelor).
- n. The lapwing: from the fancy that old maids are changed into these uneasy birds after death.
- n. The common clam, Mya arenaria.
- To do the work of a maid: usually referring to a lady's-maid.
Wiktionary
- n. A girl or an unmarried young woman; maiden.
- n. A female servant or cleaner (short for maidservant).
- n. archaic A virgin of either gender.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An unmarried woman; usually, a young unmarried woman; esp., a girl; a virgin; a maiden.
- n. obsolete A man who has not had sexual intercourse.
- n. A female servant.
- n. (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. The female of a ray or skate, esp. of the gray skate (Raia batis), and of the thornback (Raia clavata).
WordNet 3.0
- n. an unmarried girl (especially a virgin)
- n. a female domestic
Etymologies
- Middle English mayde, maide, abbreviation of maiden. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English maide, from Old English mægden; see maghu- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Enter a maid, gazing at a mango branch, and behind her, a second_.) _First maid_.”
“Got my truck washed too in case they need it for some reason as the maid is always getting me to take her somewhere.”
“The children ask their mother when "auntie" - what they called the maid, is coming back.”
“What a man with a good horse, and good wine, and good tobacco, wanteth a wife for, passeth my understanding, but I know thou art young, and the maid is a fair one.”
The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century
“- Her "maid" is poor Kirkcaldy Helen, one of the notabilities, and also blessings here; who staid with us (thanks chiefly, almost wholly, to the admirable/management/) for nearly twelve years on a stretch.”
“The gist of this cinematic gem is that an ordinary family wins a rather unordinary prize -- a smart house, complete with a holographic live-in maid who does everything from cleaning to cooking to mothering this single-parent family.”
“Our maid is 4 months pregnant and has complications where she needs to rest (actually lie down most of the time) and cannot work.”
“Little wonder that Elomire's maid is nearly mute; grotesque corruption can leave one speechless.”
The Huffington Post: Fern Siegel: Stage Door: La Bete, A Life in the Theater, Lady Rizo
“But when they refer to the maid of Desdemona's mother, the text reads "Barbarie"—a nickname, like Barb'ry or, in Samuel Pepys's Diary, Barbary Allen, of the old Scottish folksong.”
“I was ironing and one of the little girl's dresses got burned," says Daya*, a Sri Lankan woman working as a live-in maid for a wealthy family in Kuwait.”
The Huffington Post: Catholic Relief Services: Help for Sri Lanka's Abused Maids
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘maid’.
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
Laban, circumcise, beget, Esau, Rebekah, speckle, Sodom, Pharaoh, Canaanite, Canaan, Jacob, Lot and 1286 more...
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diioxyde's Words
macabre, egypt, egyptology, queen, love, sex, sister, lover, web, cobweb, line, circle and 223 more...
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Actual and Spectulative Sburb Classes
A list of all known Heroic Classes available to players of the game Sburb within the Homestuck universe, as well as any other words I can think of which would theoretically adhere to the known guid...
heir, seer, knight, witch, maid, page, thief, mage, rogue, sylph, prince, bard and 116 more...
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I know that word...but, somehow, it d...
A combination of jamais vu and logomnesia (?) for common, unremarkable words. This happened to me today with the word bungalow ("Is that the right spelling? Maybe -lou? No, that's not right....")....
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Femmesque
Curious words having to do with women: positive or negative; feminine, observational, technical, weird, stupid, crass, etc. I loathe some of these words but I'm using this list as a catch-all... ev...
mittelschmerz, gynotikolobomasso..., ingenue, uxorious, hogminny, quim, suffragette, damsel, madame, parturient, testatrix, mediatrix and 188 more...
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Seven
turnskin, therianthrope, mimic, mimical, mimetic, animagus, selkie, incantatory, cynanthrope, therianthropy, nagual, pooka and 200 more...
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Book of People
Nouns to denote types of people and their natures. Should be able to sum up a person in that one word.
cove, chap, gentleman, lady, lass, lad, flaneur, dude, pal, chum, homie, rudeboy and 41 more...
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Ladies' Night
girl, lady, madame, miss, missy, woman, dame, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, grandmother and 50 more...
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TN5 Lesson 53
story, once upon a time, coal, white, wing, shine, shone, all over, miss, beginning, storyteller, such and 10 more...
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what should i be when i grow up
janitor, salesperson, advertiser, journalist, seamstress, maid, clerk, author, librarian, scientist, astronaut, politician and 7 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for maid.

Prolagus We need a name (and a list) for this particular kind of "fake false friend", where a foreign word that looks like an English one has a different etymology and is not a translation, but a somewhat related meaning.
(Can anyone think of more words like that?) Mar 1, 2010
PossibleUnderscore Interestingly, in French, 'She helps me' translates to 'Elle m'aide'. I thought this had something to do with the etymology of this word, but it doesn't seem so... And yet, the co-incidence seems a bit too uncanny.
*muses* Mar 1, 2010