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English
Etymology
From Middle English servynge womman, servyng woman; equivalent to serving + -woman.
Noun
servingwoman (plural servingwomen) (historical)
- A female servant.
1957, Robin Carson, Pawn of Time: An Extravaganza, Henry Holt and Company, page 138: […]; and Cascorro courting Eulalia, the servingwoman, who was the very image of domesticity as she sat sewing seed pearls on a pair of gray gloves.
1983, Marion Meade, Sybille: Life, Love, & Art in the Face of Absolute Power, Open Road Media, →ISBN:The windows in the hall had to be kept closed because of the stench from the street, and each morning she had the servingwomen burn spices to perfume the air. […] A servingwoman stooped near the bed, carefully collecting fragments of china between her fingertips and transferring them to a tray.
1987, Virginia Henley, The Raven and the Rose; republished United States: Random House, 2009, →ISBN, pages 217–218:“This is beyond the beyond! To think that he can actually dismiss my own servingwomen! […]” […] He was handing a goblet of wine to the young servingwoman who was with him.
1988, Judith Merkle Riley, A Vision of Light: A Margaret of Ashbury Novel; republished United States: Three Rivers Press, 2006, →ISBN, page 144:In the meanwhile we had a place with the other servingwomen, in the room behind the kitchen.
1996, Patricia Phillips, The Rose of Ravenscrag, Dorchester Publishing, →ISBN, pages 36, 310:He had resolved to stay awake until the servingwoman delivered her final report for the night about his daughter’s condition. […] The servingwomen must have gone for hot water.
1997 [1789–1798], History of My Life, Johns Hopkins University Press, translation of Histoire de ma vie by Casanova, Giacomo, page 96:Going to spend the evening at his house with him, I became curious about a girl who, living in a house next to his, came in to keep his old wife company. At the first hour of night15 a servingwoman would come to fetch her and she would leave.
1998 February, Kate Elliott, King's Dragon, DAW Books, →ISBN:She sat and one of her servingwomen unbraided and rebraided her hair while Antonia toyed with a gold Circle of Unity studded with gems. […] “Go on,” said Antonia, her eyes shut as the servingwoman drew the cloth away from her face.
1998, Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women's Alliances in Early Modern England, pages 10, 21; republished United States: Oxford University Press, 1999, →ISBN:Ostovich examines how Jonson uses The Magnetic Lady to play out a war between gender and class roles by demonizing an alliance of servingwomen who attempt to secure their own pleasure—defined as wealth and power—by taking over a widow’s household and nominating their own heiress to the family fortune. […] The writers of citizen comedy often assigned this category of servingwoman to a lower class so that she could be played as a comic figure: in Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Sibil, Rose Oateley’s maid, in return for “a cambric apron … and a pair of purple stockings,” promises to “go jiggy-joggy to London and be here in a trice” (I, ii, 54–5, 61–2).
1998 November, Mark Anthony, Beyond the Pale, Bantam Books, →ISBN, pages 137, 358:Like young does caught in the beam of a hunter’s flashlight, two servingwomen in gray dresses froze and stared at Grace in round-mouthed surprise. […] On the floor was a small bundle of tattered cloth. The old servingwoman must have dropped it, like a miniature version of herself.
2001, Linda Cook, Silver Wind, Kensington Publishing Corporation, →ISBN, pages 50, 68:“Did you hear what I said? Your father went to the servingwomen, in that row of storage huts against the stockade.” […] Caerdoc was gone; a servingwoman scrubbing the trestle board would tell her nothing.
2002 February, Jr. (L. E.) Modesitt, Shadowsinger; republished United States: Tantor Media, 2015:“Yes, ser.” With a smile, the servingwoman turned and headed to the kitchen.
2002, Mark Hazard, The Literal Sense and the Gospel of John in Late-medieval Commentary and Literature, Routledge, →ISBN, page 53:Matthew says the second accusation of John came from a servingwoman, John from one of the male servants standing at the fire.
2002 December 3, Margaret Frazer, The Clerk's Tale, Penguin Publishing Group, →ISBN:Master Gruesby would have asked if he might speak with Master Stephen alone but the tiredly impatient servingwoman gave him no chance, showed him up to Lady Agne’s solar without question, announced, “It’s the crowner’s man,” and withdrew, all in a bustle that frighted him off saying anything.
2003, Garry Wills, Saint Augustine's Sin, Viking Press, →ISBN, page 41:It was you I scorned in scorning her—I her son, ‘the son of your servingwoman, and myself your servant.’
2003, Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight, →ISBN, pages 48–49, 125; republished United States: Harvard University Press, 2009 June 30:In the meantime, the queen and a few trusted servingwomen set about devising disguises appropriate to the “de Korff family,” including a small girl’s dress for the five-year-old dauphin and the outfit of a financial agent for the king. […] The queen’s servingwoman—the very woman the royal couple had so feared in the weeks before the flight—had informed officials of the coming evasion with great accuracy.
2010 May 4, Erin Quinn, Haunting Warrior, Penguin Publishing Group, →ISBN, pages 134, 281:Tiarnan eased back and motioned to one of the servingwomen hovering at each end of the table. […] He could picture the anxious faces in his father’s hall. The servingwoman who’d been shaking in her shoes as she’d come close to Saraid.
2010 June 16, The Complete Euripides: Volume I: Trojan Women and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 70:Sending a servingwoman to fetch seawater to bathe the corpse, Hecuba reenters the central tent, leaving the stage empty, as if at the end of a play. […] The servingwoman returns, a corpse is carried onstage, and Hecuba reemerges to learn the worst.
2011 September 30 [1871–1872], Demons: A Novel in Three Parts, Random House, translation of Бѣсы by Fyodor Dostoevsky, →ISBN, pages 161, 517:Please ring that bell, there beside you, to the servingwomen’s quarters. […] But there were tenants living in the house—a captain well known in town, his sister, and with them an elderly servingwoman, and these tenants, the captain, his sister, and the servingwoman, had all three been stabbed to death that night and apparently robbed.
2014 July 10, William T. Vollmann, Last Stories and Other Stories, Penguin Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 84:A Genovese notary who occasionally came to call was astonished at how rarely she appeared, although her tactful servingwoman explained: Every day she takes care of her very ill sister and of her other sister who is a little less ill.
Synonyms
Coordinate terms
References
- “servingwoman”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present: “a female servant […] Middle English, from SERVING entry 2 + woman”