maid
/meɪd/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.86 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An adult or adolescent female servant or cleaner (short for maidservant). (In feudal times this could be anyone from a high-ranking assistant to a low-ranking cleaner.)
name
The constellation and zodiacal sign Virgo.
name
Example Sentences
- "She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid,[…]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher."
- "You are betrothed both to a maid and man."
- "And as she did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had maided a dear old lady."
- "Virgo, the Maid, guideth the Womb, Midriff and Guts."
- "The diamond is said to typify innocence, and it is also associated with Virgo, the maid, in the Signs of the Zodiac, whilst the ruby is associated with the sign Aries, the ram."
- "For they are so easy to recall if you do it in associated pairs—like the Maid and the Twins, the Bull and the Rain, the Fishes and the Scales."
Etymology
From Middle English mayde, maide, abbreviation of Middle English maiden from Old English mæġden (Old English mǣden). Ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *magaþ, from Proto-Germanic *magaþs (“girl, virgin”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: mayde, mæġden, mǣden, *magaþ, *magaþs
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /meɪd/
- British English: /meɪd/