maidenhead

plural maidenheads · alternative obsolete maydenhead

1. countableliterallyThe hymen.

   Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.

   c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

2. metonymicallyuncountableVirginity.

   My lord,[…]/ I brought you nothing else it may be said / But faith and nakedness and maidenhead.

   1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 363

   5 more examples

   Put in but little Silver or Gold, for if you do, you quite spoil the Compoſition ; but inſtead thereof, add of Tradeſmens Bills for Cloaths, to the Value of 100 l. [¶] Laſtly, Take away the Girl's Maidenhead, and then the Compoſition is fit for Uſe.

   1713, Sir John Willes, The Speech that was Intended to Have Been Spoken by the Terræ-Filius: In the Theatre at O----d, July 13, 1713, Had Not His Mouth Been Stopp'd by the V. Ch------r

   Gallants, a bashful poet bids me say, He's come to lose his maidenhead to-day. Be not too fierce; for he's but green of age, And ne'er, till now, debauch'd upon the stage.

   1760, John Dryden, The Miscellaneous Works: Containing All His Original Poems, Tales, and Translations, page 367

   She prayed to Pallas, and by her help escaped from him in the form of a crow, rejoicing more to keep her maidenhead white under the blackness of the feathers than to lose it and be adorned with the fairest pearls.

   1900, John Gower, The English Works of John Gower

   So the reference to the plucking of the ginger flower is again an indirect allusion to the taking of the girl's maidenhead .

   1995, Ruth H. Finnegan, Margaret Orbell, Reader in Maori Head of Department of Maori Margaret Orbell, South Pacific Oral Traditions, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 70

   The gender reversals that pervade this play continue mischievously in the man's maidenhead being the undisclosed secret.

   2004, Yu Jin Ko, Mutability and Division on Shakespeare's Stage, page 70

   Synonyms: maidhood, maidenhood

alternative Maydenhead

1. A town in Windsor and Maidenhead borough, Berkshire, England (OS grid ref SU8881).

   A short time since, some friends drinking tea one summer evening at their residence near Maidenhead, with all the windows of the drawing-room open, there suddenly burst in a host of small flies, which covered the table and the furniture […]

   1836, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction