bridesmaiden
nounEtymology From bride + -s- + maiden.
1
An unmarried bridesmaid.
- […]; and so warmly did he share the partiality of Lady Mary and Lady Jemima for the gentle recluse, whom he persisted in calling “la belle au bois dormant,” that, when informed that though the funeral baked meats of the late Earl were not to furnish forth the marriage-table of his successor, the bombazine of the two noble spinsters was, in a decent time, to give place to bridesmaiden white, he was unable to resist a mild “hurrah!”1855, Catherine Grace F. Gore, Mammon; or, The hardships of an heiress, volume 2, Hurst and Blackett, page 45:
- And when a little bridesmaiden, uncommonly like you, / Comes into church so trippingly, all dress’d in white and blue, / You’ll discover, as you reach the middle aisle, / Why they linger’d, linger’d, linger’d at the stile.1875, Belgravia, volume 27, page 501:
4 more examples
- “But it will be a deception,” urged Mòr. “I shall have to appear as chief bridesmaiden, whilst I am a married woman.”1880, Agnes Smith Lewis, The Brides of Ardmore: A Story of Irish Life, page 258:
- The Night wore all her starry gems of pride, / To be bridesmaiden to that peerless bride;1885, Edwin Arnold, The Secret of Death: From the Sanskrit with Some Collected Poems, page 58:
- There were errands to be done, he said, but as these “errands” always took him over to the little island of Urk, where lived a certain pretty Olla Tronk, who was Jacqueline’s great friend and her chosen bridesmaiden, the sisters naturally teased him a good deal about them.1889, Susan Coolidge, Just Sixteen; republished Germany: Outlook Verlag, 2018, →ISBN, page 147:
- That night, therefore, I told my cousin of my plans, and she greatly astonished and dismayed me by saying that she, too, would go with me and be bridesmaiden.1896, The Primitive Methodist Magazine, volume 77, page 329:
- Related terms
- bridesmaid, bridesman, bridesmatron