Spinster (pronounced spin-sta (U) or spin-ster (non-U))
(1) A woman still unmarried beyond the usual age (according
to the usual social conventions) of marrying.
Except when used historically, spinster has long been thought offensive or
at least disparaging.
(2) In law (and still used in some jurisdictions), a
woman who has never married.
(3) A person (historically always a woman) whose
occupation is the spinning of threads (archaic).
(4) A jocular slang variation of the more common a spin
doctor, spin merchant or spin master (one who spins (puts a spin on) a
political media story so as to lend a favorable or advantageous appearance.
(5) A woman of evil character who has committed evil
deeds, so called from being forced to spin in a house of correction (obsolete).
(6) A spider; an insect (such as a silkworm) which spins
thread (a rare, dialectal form).
1325–1375: The construct was spin + -ster. From the Middle English spynnester & spinnestere (a
woman who spins fibre). The early form
combined the Middle English spinnen (spin
fibers into thread) with -stere, the
Middle English feminine suffix from the Old English -istre, from the Proto-Germanic -istrijon,
the feminine agent suffix used as the equivalent of the masculine –ere. It was used in Middle English also to form nouns
of action (meaning "a person who ...") without regard for gender, a
use now common in casual adaptations. Spinster
came to be used to describe spinners of both sexes which clearly upset some because
by 1640 a double-feminine form had emerged: spinstress (a female spinner)
which, 1716 also was being used for "a maiden lady". Spinster, spinsterishness, spinsterism, spinsterism, spinsterdom, spinstership and spinsterhood are nouns and spinsterish, spinsterly, spinsterlike & spinsteresque are adjectives; the noun plural is spinsters.
How prevalent the practice actually was is impossible to say because of the paucity of social histories of most classes prior to the modern age but the public attitude was said to be that unmarried women were supposed to occupy themselves with spinning. This spread to common law through that typically English filter, the class system. So precisely was the status of the spinster defined that the cut-off point was actually where one’s father sat in the order of precedence, a spinster "the legal designation in England of all unmarried women from a viscount's daughter downward". Thus a woman’s father had be on the third rung of the peerage to avoid spinsterhood and that meant to avoid the fate the options were either marriage or to secure him an upward notch (from viscount to earl). The use in English legal documents lasted from the seventeen until well into the twentieth century and, by 1719, had become the standard term for a "woman still unmarried and beyond the usual age at which it was expected".
A metallic wood-boring beetle (left) and a thornback ray (right).
One alternative to spinster which still shows up in the odd literary novel was the Italian zitella (an older unmarried woman). Zitella was the feminine form of zitello (an older, unmarried man), which was from zito (a young, unmarried man), from the Neapolitan or Sicilian zitu, both probably related to the Vulgar Latin pittitus (small, worthless). The feminine form of zito was zita (young unmarried woman) and both in southern Italian dialectical use could be used respectively to mean boyfriend & girlfriend and also a type of pasta (correctly a larger, hollow macaroni but as culinary terms they’ve apparently be applied more liberally). The Italian zitellaggio (zitellaggi the plural) was the state of spinsterhood, the construct being zitella + -aggio. The suffix -aggio was from the Latin -āticum, probably via the Old Occitan –atge and was used to form nouns indicating an action or result related to the root verb. Pleasingly, Zitella is a genus of metallic, wood-boring beetles in the family Buprestidae, containing four species and commonly known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles. Quite why the name was chosen isn’t immediately obvious but it’s not uncommon for genera and species to be named after an individual or a place associated with the discovery. It’s therefore wholly speculative to suggest a link between an entomologist’s girlfriend and a wood-boring beetle. Still, even that connection might be preferred to the archaic English form "thornback" (a woman over a certain age (quoted variously as 26 or 30 and thus similar in construction to the modern Chinese Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ) (leftover women) who has never married and in the eighteenth century a thornback was thought "older than a spinster").
The slang “old maid”, referring to either to a spinster of a certain age or one who, although younger, behaves in a similar way (the implication being negative qualities such as fussiness or undesirability) is from the 1520s and the card game of that name is attested by 1831 (though it may now be thought a microaggression). Bachelorette or the gender-neutral forms “unmarried” or “single” tend now to be preferred. Spinster is a noun, spinsterish an adjective and spinsterishly an adverb but the most commonly used derived forms were probably the noun spinsterhood and the adjective spinsterlike. The noun plural is spinsters.
End of spinsterhood.
On Sunday 28 November, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram her notice of engagement to Bader Shammas (b 1987), an assistant vice president at financial services company Credit Suisse. At that point Ms Lohan should have been styled as betrothed which is the state of being engaged; the terms fiancé (or fiancée) also used. By tradition, engagement rings are worn on the left hand. Fortunately (for Instagram and other purposes), the ring-finger, partially severed in a nautical accident on the Aegean in 2016 was re-attached with some swift micro-surgery, the digit making a full recovery. The couple's marriage was announced during 2022.
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