Maidとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From 中期英語 mayde, maide, abbreviation of 中期英語 maiden from 古期英語 mæġden (古期英語 mǣden). Ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *magaþ, from Proto-Germanic *magaþs (“girl, virgin”).

発音

• IPA: /meɪd/
• 韻: -eɪd
• Homophone: made

名詞

maid (plural maids)

1. (dated or poetic) A girl or an unmarried young woman; maiden.

   Synonyms: damsel, maiden

2. A female servant or cleaner (short for maidservant).
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […] ; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.

3. (archaic) A virgin, now female but originally one of either gender.
   • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     You are betrothed both to a maid and man.

使用する際の注意点

• In the sense of a girl or unmarried woman, the term is often used in the common (species) names of flowering plants.
• In the sense of a maidservant, the term has also been internationalized to a character design describing a young girl in a maid uniform.

同意語

• (female servant): ancilla, handmaiden, lady-in-waiting, maiden, maidservant, servingmaid, servingwoman, womanservant
• (female cleaner): chambermaid (in a hotel), charlady (in a house), charwoman (in a house), cleaning lady (in a house), cleaneress (rare term)

派生語

動詞

maid (third-person singular simple present maids, present participle maiding, simple past and past participle maided)

1. (transitive, rare) To serve as lady's maid to, to wait upon.
   • 1913, Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger:

     And as she did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had maided a dear old lady.

アナグラム

• Dima, Madi, aim'd, amid, diam, diam.