page_title: Spinster
section_title: Etymology and history
hierarchical_section_title: Spinster / Etymology and history
context_page_description: Spinster is a term referring to an unmarried woman who is older than what is perceived as the prime age range during which women usually marry. It can also indicate that a woman is considered unlikely to ever marry. The term originally denoted a woman whose occupation was to spin. A synonymous but more pejorative term is old maid. The closest equivalent term for males is "bachelor" or "confirmed bachelor", but this generally does not carry the same pejorative connotations in reference to age and perceived desirability in marriage.
context_section_description: Long before the Industrial Age, "spinster" denoted girls and women who spun wool. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, spinning was "commonly done by unmarried women, hence the word came to denote" an unmarried woman in legal documents from the 1600s to the early 1900s, and "by 1719 was being used generically for 'woman still unmarried and beyond the usual age for it'". As a denotation for unmarried women in a legal context, the term dates back to at least 1699, and was commonly used in banns of marriage of the Church of England where the prospective bride was described as a "spinster of this parish".
  The Oxford American Dictionary tags "spinster" (meaning "...unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage") as "derogatory" and "a good example of the way in which a word acquires strong connotations to the extent that it can no longer be used in a neutral sense."
  The 1828 and 1913 editions of Merriam Webster's Dictionary defined spinster in two ways:
  A woman who spins, or whose occupation is to spin.
  Law: An unmarried or single woman.
  
  By the 1800s, the term had evolved to include women who chose not to marry. During that century middle-class spinsters, as well as their married peers, took ideals of love and marriage very seriously, and spinsterhood was indeed often a consequence of their adherence to those ideals. They remained unmarried not because of individual shortcomings but because they didn't find the one "who could be all things to the heart".
  One 19th-century editorial in the fashion publication Peterson's Magazine encouraged women to remain choosy in selecting a mate — even at the price of never marrying. The editorial, titled "Honorable Often to Be an Old Maid", advised women: "Marry for a home! Marry to escape the ridicule of being called an old maid? How dare you, then, pervert the most sacred institution of the Almighty, by becoming the wife of a man for whom you can feel no emotions of love, or respect even?"
caption: The Spinner by William-Adolphe Bouguereau shows a woman hand-spinning using a drop spindle. Fibers to be spun are bound to a distaff held in her left hand.
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