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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Offensive A woman who has remained single beyond the conventional age for marrying.
  2. n. Informal A person regarded as being primly fastidious.
  3. n. Games A card game in which the player who holds a designated card at the end is the loser.
  4. n. Games The loser of this game.
  5. n. Chiefly Southern U.S. See zinnia.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The house-or garden-plant Vinca rosea.
  2. n. A gaping clam: same as gaper, 4.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An old woman who has never married; a spinster.
  2. n. A particular kind of periwinkle.
  3. n. A particular kind of zinnia.
  4. n. An unpopped kernel in a batch of popped popcorn kernels.
  5. n. A card game in which cards must be paired and one undesirable card is designated "old maid".
  6. n. An unpaired card in that game.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. See under Old.
  2. adj. 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

  1. 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')
  2. n. an elderly unmarried woman
  3. n. the loser in a game of old maid
  4. n. any of various plants of the genus Zinnia cultivated for their variously and brightly colored flower heads
  5. n. commonly cultivated Old World woody herb having large pinkish to red flowers

Examples

  • “A young lieutenant at the Academy and his fiancée were seen by an old maid at the hotel to kiss each other.”

    Henry Ossian Flipper The Colored Cadet at West Point

  • “How queer it seems to me that people won't let me be a little girl and will act as if I were an old maid or matron of ninety-nine!”

    The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss

  • “It is in part redeemed by certain scenes in the house and vicinity of an old maid in Exeter.”

    Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

  • “Thence by water to Blackfriars, and so to Paul's churchyard and bespoke severall books, and so home and there dined, my man William giving me a lobster sent him by my old maid Sarah.”

    The Diary of Samuel Pepys, May/Jun 1665

  • “And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a heathen she must convert.”

    Tramping on Life

  • “She went on in that strain that reminded me of St. Clair's “cursing up hill and down” that almost frightened the New England old maid of”

    A Woman's Life-Work

  • “This was an old maid of about five-and-forty, who always wore over her head a hood of the most singular shape; as a rule she was almost motionless, with a sombre and lost expression of countenance, and with her eyes glazed and hard-set.”

    Recollections of My Youth

  • “An old maid lived in the house where I did who perfectly hated him, calling him a good-for-nothing fellow.”

    History of the American Clock Business and Life of Chauncey Jerome

  • “How many times that wrong impression which I got from that old maid has passed through my mind, and how sorry I have always been for that prejudice.”

    History of the American Clock Business and Life of Chauncey Jerome

  • “She evidently had in mind the typical old maid with gimlet ringlets!”

    Memories and Anecdotes

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Comments

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  • 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

‘old maid’ has been looked up 713 times, added to 4 lists, commented on 1 time, and is not a valid Scrabble word.