old-maidism

English

Etymology

old maid +‎ -ism

Noun

old-maidism (countable and uncountable, plural old-maidisms)

1. The condition or characteristics of a spinster.
   • 1857, George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, Part III, Chapter 3:

     The Miss Linnets were in that temperate zone of old-maidism, when a woman will not say but that if a man of suitable years and character were to offer himself, she might be induced to tread the remainder of life's vale in company with him;

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “old-maidism”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)