Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Like an old maid; characteristic of an old maid.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Like an old maid; prim; precise; particular; overly fastidious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Like an old maid; prim; precise; particular.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective primly fastidious

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

old maid +‎ -ish

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Examples

  • A year later, in your Vanity Fair article, "Hitler's Ghost," (which Irving has posted on his website) you argued that Irving's books deserve to be published in America, described criticism of Irving as "hysterical and old-maidish," and declared, "David Irving is not just a Fascist historian, he is also a great historian of Fascism."

    Max Blumenthal: Dance, Hitchens, Dance 2008

  • Being a spinster, you're little old-maidish, but that's no harm.

    A Month in the Country 2006

  • And she was far less settled into old-maidish ways.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2003

  • And she was far less settled into old-maidish ways.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2003

  • Throwing politeness to the winds, he twitted Sara with her finical affectations, her old-maidish ways, the morning sloth that expected

    Australia Felix 2003

  • She pitched her easel with her precise old-maidish movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr Carmichael, but close enough for his protection.

    To the Lighthouse 2002

  • Frank Kennedy might own more land than anyone in the County and he might have a very kind heart, but these things counted for nothing against the fact that he was forty, slight and nervous and had a thin ginger-colored beard and an old-maidish, fussy way about him.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • Frank Kennedy might own more land than anyone in the County and he might have a very kind heart, but these things counted for nothing against the fact that he was forty, slight and nervous and had a thin ginger-colored beard and an old-maidish, fussy way about him.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • She made him feel, for the first time in his old-maidish life, that he was a strong upstanding man fashioned by God in a nobler mold than other men, fashioned to protect silly helpless women.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

  • She made him feel, for the first time in his old-maidish life, that he was a strong upstanding man fashioned by God in a nobler mold than other men, fashioned to protect silly helpless women.

    Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1996

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