Etymology

spinster

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Today it means: A woman who has never been married, especially one past the typical marrying age according to social traditions. Full definition →

Middle English spynnestere
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited fromspynnestere“woman who spins fibre”
  2. English todayspinster

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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.