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handmaiden

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,866 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: handmaidens

A handmaiden is a female personal servant. The queen's handmaiden, serve as handmaiden, a handmaiden's duties.

It is archaic and biblical, and it survives mainly in translations of scripture and in fiction set long ago. Figuratively, one thing is called the handmaiden of another when it serves it, as in the old phrase about philosophy and theology.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo · Public domain

Definitions of handmaiden

  1. 1nounhandmaidenA female personal servant.C1

    “The queen's handmaiden helped her dress and brushed her hair each morning.”

handmaiden is a servant.

Where it comes from

Hand plus maiden, in Middle English, from an older sense of hand meaning close at hand.

  1. Middle English

    hande mayden

  2. English, today

    handmaiden

From Middle English hande mayden, handmaiden, hand mayden, hand-mayden, handmayden, hondemaiden, hond maydyn, hoondmaydyn. by surface analysis, hand + maiden. woman who supports transgender rights 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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

handmaiden in the wild

  • Depending on culture or historical period, a handmaiden may be of enslaved status or may be simply an employee.

    Handmaiden

  • In the Arthurian legend, Lunete (also known as Luned, Lunet, or Lunette) is a handmaiden and advisor to Laudine, the Lady of the Fountain.

    Lunete

  • A handmaiden is a historic type of personal servant.

    Handmaiden (disambiguation)

  • The story of his affair with Brangaine, the handmaiden of Iseult of Ireland is significantly mentioned in the Tristan and Iseult legend.

    Kahedin

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.