Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A young woman or girl; a maiden.
  • noun A damselfish.
  • noun A damselfly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A young unmarried woman; especially, in former use, a maiden of gentle birth.
  • noun A contrivance put into a bed to warm the feet of old or sick persons. Bailey.
  • noun A projection on a millstone-spindle for shaking the shoe.
  • noun A titular designation of a young gentleman; a young man of gentle or noble birth: as, damsel Pepin; damsel Richard, Prince of Wales.

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

  • noun obsolete A young person, either male or female, of noble or gentle extraction
  • noun A young unmarried woman; a girl; a maiden.
  • noun (Milling) An attachment to a millstone spindle for shaking the hopper.

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

  • noun A young woman (of noble birth).
  • noun A girl; a maiden (without sexual experience).

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

  • noun a young unmarried woman

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English damisele, from Old French dameisele, damoiselle, from Vulgar Latin *dominicella, diminutive of domina, lady; see dame.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English, dameisele, from Old French damoisele, from Late Latin *domnicella, from Classical Latin domina ("mistress"), from domus ("house") (from which English domestic etc.), from Proto-Indo-European *dṓm, from root *demh₂- (“to build”).

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word damsel.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.