lady's maid

plural lady's maids · plural ladies' maids

1. A female servant employed by an upper-class woman to attend to her personal needs.

   Near-synonyms: chamberer, chambermaid (chamberer sense) (both broadly synonymous)

   5 more examples

   A pretty Girl, the Lady’s Maid, Who all her Dress in Order Laid, Behind her Mistress simp’ring stood, And rais’d the youthful ’Squires Blood.

   1735, anonymous author, The Rake’s Progress; or, the Humours of Drury-Lane, London: J. Chettwood, Canto V, p. 35

   He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a lady’s-maid.

   1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter XII, in Jane Eyre. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC

   […] the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a lady’s maid’s manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his name.

   1908, Henry James, chapter XXXVI, in The Portrait of a Lady (The Novels and Tales of Henry James; IV), New York edition, volume II, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 89

   The cat is the offspring of a cat and the dog of a dog, but butlers and lady’s maids do not reproduce their kind. They have other duties.

   1915, H. G. Wells, Bealby, Chapter I, Section 1

   A first class lady’s maid is required to be a hairdresser, a good packer and an expert needlewoman. Her first duty is to keep her lady's clothes in order and to help her dress, and undress.

   1922, Emily Post, chapter 12, in Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home

   Synonyms: chamberer, chambermaid[Appendix:Glossary