Medieval maids were commonly referred to as ancilla (Latin for handmaid), servitrix, or simply maidservants. Depending on their specific duties and rank, they were often called scullery maids (kitchen work), chambermaids (rooms), nurses, or damsels.
Ancilla was the most widely used to designate female domestic servants. Unlike in England, where the ancilla was usually a girl or a teenager, the ancillae of Languedoc were also married women and widows. In Tuscany, married women and widows made up 56% of the female servants found in ricordanze books.
A handmaiden (nowadays less commonly handmaid or maidservant) is a personal maid or female servant. The term is also used metaphorically for something whose primary role is to serve or assist. Depending on culture or historical period, a handmaiden may be of enslaved status or may be simply an employee.
The term 'nursemaid' has wide historical use, mostly related to servants charged with the actual care of children. In ancient usage, the terms 'nursemaid' and 'nurse' (as, for example, the character in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) are largely interchangeable.
Spinster or old maid is a term referring to an unmarried woman who is older than what is perceived as the prime age range during which women usually marry. It can also indicate that a woman is considered unlikely to ever marry. The term originally denoted a woman whose occupation was to spin.
Women who were once called spinsters eventually started being called old maids. In 17th-century New England, there were also words like “thornback” – a sea skate covered with thorny spines – used to describe single women older than 25.
Definitions (Senses and Subsenses) 1. (a) An unmarried woman, usually young; wif or (nor) ~, wif other ~, ~ or wif, ~ widwe or wif, wif ne ~ ne widwe; (b) a woman, as distinguished from a man; (c) a girl, a young girl; ~ ne knave.
A page or page boy is traditionally a young male attendant or servant, but may also have been a messenger in the service of a nobleman. Lord Patten, robed as Chancellor of Oxford University, assisted by a page. During wedding ceremonies, a page boy is often used as a symbolic attendant to carry the rings.
A lady-in-waiting (alternatively written lady in waiting) or court lady is a female personal assistant at a court, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman but of lower rank than the woman to whom she attended.
The term “old maid” is English and means an unmarried childless woman or spinster. Used as early as 1761 for the title of a play by Irishman Arthur Murphy, it also means an unpopped kernel in a pot of popcorn.
That depends, but usually not by name. They might address them a “you” or “servant” or something like that. Especially if we're talking about Medieval nobility. In modern times, maids and butlers are paid hired staff and addressed more civilly.
Maid in Middle English meant an unmarried woman, especially a young one, or specifically a virgin. These meanings lived on in English until recent times (and are still familiar from literature and folk music), alongside the sense of the word as a type of servant.
In a religious context, both Aldhelm and possibly these later Anglo-Saxon glossators seem to understand celibacy as akin to virginity in terms of sexual abstinence for either gender: a man or a woman can be described as celibate or as a virgin.
Handmaid is an old fashioned word for a housekeeper or servant. Wealthy people living in grand houses once employed handmaids to clean for and serve them.
How did people wipe their bottoms in medieval times?
In the Middle Ages, moss was the wiping material of choice for many people, and a brisk trade developed bringing moss from the countryside to towns for this purpose. Straw was also sometimes used as a (rather less comfortable) alternative.
Yeoman (household servant) One of the earliest documented uses of Yeoman, it refers to a servant or attendant in a late Medieval English royal or noble household. A Yeoman was usually of higher rank in the household hierarchy. This hierarchy reflected the feudal society in which they lived.
Squire: A young nobleman attendant upon a knight and ranked next below a knight in feudal hierarchy. Page: A boy who acted as a knight's attendant as the first stage of training for chivalric knighthood. Squire: A young nobleman attendant upon a knight and ranked next below a knight in feudal hierarchy.
At the end of the 17th century, at a time of concern over low marriage rates in England, spinster also acquired its pejorative meaning, alongside the creation of the 'old maid'. Michael Sweerts, An Old Woman Spinning.
Servants were concentrated among particular groups. If the poorest households are excluded from the statistics, the percentage of homes with service increases dramatically, as indicated by 1930–1931 studies of urban, college-educated homemakers, or middle-class families, from 20 to 25 percent of which had a servant.
