handmaiden
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.31 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Alternative form of handmaid.
Example Sentences
- "And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:"
- "Online and over Shabbat dinners, arguments about the election have grown bitter. Those grudgingly planning to vote for Labour have been called traitors to the community and self-hating Jews. Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit."
- "About a quarter of Gen Z-ers report that they haven’t had sex in the last year. A.I. could be a handmaiden of this social dissolution, offering a digital simulacrum of friendships and relationships without opening people to the beauty and agony of real relationships, in which we learn to relate to other people who are truly other people, and whose desires are not simply extensions of our own."
- "The fact that it is not possible to be seen as a supporter of trans people's human rights, as all feminists are or at least should be, unless we fully capitulate and take the metaphorical – and sometimes literal – boot in the face shows how extreme trans activists, enabled by their handmaiden allies, are nothing but a misogynistic men’s rights movement."
- "Solidarity with trans people but not women[,] I note[,] Angela. Especially the boring ones who fought for rights that you now enjoy. Enjoy being a handmaiden."
- "I have been called a handmaiden, a “pick me” girl, and been accused of vying for male attention."
Etymology
From Middle English hande mayden, handmaiden, hand mayden, hand-mayden, handmayden, hondemaiden, hond maydyn, hoondmaydyn. By surface analysis, hand + maiden. Sense 2 is an allusion to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), in which "handmaids" are women who serve the male commanders in a patriarchal dystopia.