milkmaidy

comparative more milkmaidy · superlative most milkmaidy

1. Resembling or characteristic of a milkmaid.

   Prettily floral, milkmaidy fabrics and papers for the home.

   1976, Shirley Conran, Superwoman Yearbook: A Home Note Book, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, →ISBN, page 25, column 1

   5 more examples

   Fullness of skirt aids in giving a better effect than narrowness, but even with ful­ness in excess, there is still a certain unfinished, milkmaidy look, wanting both in elegance and aplomb.

   1890 January 17, “A Happy Medium”, in The Brainerd Dispatch, volume 9, number 8, Brainerd, Minn.: Ingersoll & Wieland, page [3], column 1

   We are going to have an open-air vaudeville and show off all those talents which make us such a loss to the professional stage, and the dance in the coach house, which boasts a polished floor, if you ever heard of such a luxury, will be on the nickel-a-dance order and as milkmaidy and country-wenchy as we can possibly achieve.

   1914 July 24, Dolly, “A Debutante’s Letter”, in The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif., published 26 July 1914, page 12

   So one by one the shops came into being, each exactly like all the others: bow windows divided up in old-fashioned style into many little panes; no Neon lights—“My God! No!” Maurice Bannerman shouted, nearly apoplectic, when some one suggested it—waitresses looking rather milkmaidy; and, above all, quiet.

   1935, Howard Spring, Rachel Rosing, Stretford: Memories, published 2000, →ISBN, page 24

   […] the curtains had still not arrived, were still not hanging at our rustic casements. And yet I could envisage them so clearly, the red and white of the neat check, so rustic and milkmaidy—though, admittedly, Jacques saw them more as striped, white and green, a disparity that gave rise to many a sunny discussion, just like the ones newlyweds have, discussions immediately complicated by the views of the children, all of whom were hoping for sprigs of flowers; […]

   1971, Françoise Mallet-Joris [pseudonym; Françoise-Eugenie-Julienne Lilar], translated by Derek Coltman, “Curtains”, in The Paper House, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, →ISBN, page 59

   Terri was so lovely in a kind of fresh and clean, milkmaidy way.

   1995, Annette Meyers, chapter 20, in These Bones Were Made for Dancin’: A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 137