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''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/
  • (Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈmæɪdən/
    • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • (Scotland) IPA: /ˈmedən/
  • (Wales, without the pane–pain merger) IPA: /ˈmeidən/
  • Rhymes: -eɪdən

Printed 2026-07-08.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

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 ‎: ↩

  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: ↩

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