''maiden'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

maiden - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

maiden (plural maidens)

• (now chiefly literary) A girl or an unmarried young woman.
• (archaic) A female virgin.
  • ✤ She’s unmarried and still a maiden.
• (obsolete, dialectal) A man with no experience of sex, especially because of deliberate abstention.
  • ✤ As for that ſaid ſire Bors I wille be ſhryuen with a good wylle/Soo ſyr Bors was confeſſyd/and for al wymmen ſir Bors was a vyrgyne/ſauf for one/that was the doughter of kynge Brangorys/and on her he gat a child that hyghte Elayne/and ſauf for her ſyre Bors was a clene mayden […]¹
• A maidservant.
• A clothes maiden.
• (now rare) An unmarried woman, especially an older woman.
• (horse racing) A racehorse without any victory, i.e. one having a “virgin record”.
• (horse racing) A horse race in which all starters are maidens.
• (historical) A Scottish counterpart of the guillotine.
  • ✤ It had been customary during the whole civil war, to decapitate state criminals by the instrument called the maiden; but Montrose was condemned to a more ignominious death, by a gibbet thirty feet high²
• (cricket) A maiden over.
• (obsolete) A machine for washing linen.
• (Wicca) Alternative form of Maiden.

Adjective

maiden (not comparable)

• Virgin.
  • ✤ a surprising old maiden lady³
  • ✤ It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden sister […]⁴
• (of a female, human or animal) Without offspring.
• Like or befitting a (young, unmarried) maiden.
  • ✤ Haue you no modeſty, no maiden ſhame,/No touch of baſhfulneſſe?⁵
• (figuratively) Being a first occurrence or event.
  • ✤ 1975 was the year when West Indies won their maiden World Cup title.
  • ✤ The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage.
  • ✤ After Edmund Burke’s maiden speech, William Pitt the Elder said Burke had “spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe” and that the Commons should congratulate itself on acquiring such a member.
  • ✤ Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado took his maiden victory and Williams’s first since 2004 in a strategic battle with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.⁶
• (cricket) Being an over in which no runs are scored.
  • ✤ He bowled a record twelve maiden overs in his spell of 8-33 in 21 overs.
• Fresh; innocent; unpolluted; pure; hitherto unused.
  • ✤ Come Brother Iohn, full brauely haſt thou fleſht thy Maiden ſword.⁷
  • ✤ When I am dead, good Wench,/Let me be vs’d with Honor; ſtrew me ouer/With Maiden Flowers, that all the world may know/I was a chaſte Wife, to my Graue: Embalme me,/Then lay me forth (although vnqueen’d) yet like/A Queene, and Daughter to a King enterre me.⁸
• (of a fortress) Never having been captured or violated.
  • ✤ Victorie forsook him for ever since he ransacked the maiden town of Magdenburg⁹
  • ✤ But every citizen considered his own honor as bound up with the honor of the maiden fortress.¹⁰
• (of a tree) Grown from seed and never pruned.

Etymology

From Middle English mayden, meiden, from Old English mæġden (“girl”), originally a diminutive of mæġeþ (“girl”) via diminutive suffix -en, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡magaþ, from Proto-Germanic ﹡magaþs. Equivalent to maid +‎ -en.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA: /ˈmeɪdən/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈmæɪdən/
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
• (Scotland) IPA: /ˈmedən/
• (Wales, without the pane–pain merger) IPA: /ˈmeidən/
• Rhymes: -eɪdən

Printed 2026-07-08.

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Footnotes

1. 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum Quartum”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book XI (in Middle English), [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC, leaf 289, recto; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC, page 577: ↩

2. 1832, Robert Chambers, The History of Scotland: ↩

3. 1857–1859, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858–1859, →OCLC: ↩

4. 1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House: ↩

5. c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 155, column 2: ↩

6. 2012 May 13, Andrew Benson, “Williams’s Pastor Maldonado takes landmark Spanish Grand Prix win”, in BBC Sport ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

7. c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv], page 72, column 2: ↩

8. 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 226, column 2: ↩

9. 1631, J. Taylor,: ↩

10. 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC: ↩