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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

spinster.

A woman who has never been married, especially one past the typical marrying age according to social traditions.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈspɪnstə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈspɪnstɚ/General-American
  1. A woman who has never been married, especially one past the typical marrying age according to social traditions.

    derogatory · sometimes
  2. One who spins (puts a spin on) a political media story so as to give something a favorable or advantageous appearance; a spin doctor, spin merchant or spinmeister.

  3. Someone whose occupation was spinning thread.

    obsolete
  4. A woman of evil life and character; so called from being forced to spin in a house of correction.

    obsolete
  5. A spider; an insect (such as a silkworm) which spins thread.

    dialectal · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English spynnestere (“woman who spins fibre”), from c. 1350; equivalent to spin + -ster. The semantic development is from a historical notion of unmarried women spinning thread for a living.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.