Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Offensive A woman who has remained single beyond the conventional age for marrying.
- n. Informal A person regarded as being primly fastidious.
- n. Games A card game in which the player who holds a designated card at the end is the loser.
- n. Games The loser of this game.
- n. Chiefly Southern U.S. See zinnia.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The house-or garden-plant Vinca rosea.
- n. A gaping clam: same as gaper, 4.
Wiktionary
- n. pejorative An old woman who has never married; a spinster.
- n. A particular kind of periwinkle.
- n. A particular kind of zinnia.
- n. An unpopped kernel in a batch of popped popcorn kernels.
- n. A card game in which cards must be paired and one undesirable card is designated "old maid".
- n. An unpaired card in that game.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. See under Old.
- adj. (Bot.) A simple game of cards, played by matching them. The person with whom the odd card is left is the
old maid .
WordNet 3.0
- n. a card game using a pack of cards from which one queen has been removed; players match cards and the player holding the unmatched queen at the end of the game is the loser (or `old maid')
- n. an elderly unmarried woman
- n. the loser in a game of old maid
- n. any of various plants of the genus Zinnia cultivated for their variously and brightly colored flower heads
- n. commonly cultivated Old World woody herb having large pinkish to red flowers
Examples
“Harriot Freke is visited by every body but old dowagers and old maids: I am neither an old dowager nor an old maid – the consequence is obvious, my lord.”
““The next piece was a satire on certain members who were getting very much into the way of joking on the worn-out subjects of matrimony and old maid and old bachelorism.”
“Myrtle had two elderly female cousins in the area, one a widow in a nursing home in Dudson Falls, the other an old maid still in her family’s farmhouse (though without the farm acreage) outside North Dudson.”
“; and quoth he, This is the grizzled75 virgin and the old maid long kept at home,76 the giver of joy to hearts, whereof saith the poet: —”
“The old maid stared at him, a half-amused smile playing over her thin face.”
“Well, we walked in the office and Marcantonio had a secretary named Miss Johnson who was a very austere New England old maid type, you know.”
“A young lieutenant at the Academy and his fiancée were seen by an old maid at the hotel to kiss each other.”
“Miss Bentley was a shallow old maid with a rather large nose and romantic disposition who served tea with a careful intensity worthy of a sacrament.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘old maid’.
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Candy Hearts
Four letters (or less) per row. http://acme.com/heartmaker/
frog love, dumb luck, pink lips, soul mate, wart hog, junk food, spoo ning, blue pill, city dust, buck wild, bull dust, tear bear and 72 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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Let's Play
Classic Children's Toys and Games and Amusements
colorforms, jacks, hopscotch, louisville slugger, duncan imperial, flexible flyer, radio flyer, troll doll, dam doll, pick-up sticks, silly putty, marbles and 155 more...
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Sluts, Bitches, and Goddesses
Words for women.
floozie, whore, cunt, tart, trull, ianfu, demimondaine, demimonde, ball-buster, ball-breaker, bar girl, b-girl and 84 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for old maid.
treeseed There are retail card decks specifically for playing Old Maid, but it is just as easy to play with a regular deck of 52 cards. In this case, one Queen is removed from the deck and the remaining 51 cards are used. Players try to collect tricks of pairs without drawing the single Queen or Old Maid. Jan 27, 2008