maiden aunt
(ˈmeɪd(ə)n ɑːnt)
[f. maiden a. 1 + aunt.]
An unmarried aunt. Hence ˌmaiden-ˈauntishly adv., in a manner characteristic of maiden aunts; primly.
| 1709 Prior Henry & Emma in Poems on Several Occasions 244 The ancient Maiden Aunt. 1711 [see aunt 1 a]. 1758 Johnson Idler No. 24 ¶5 Maiden aunts with small fortunes. 1847 C. M. Yonge Scenes & Characters xiii. 158 That worst of plagues, a prying maiden aunt. 1917 T. S. Eliot Prufrock 33 Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt. 1928 Observer 22 July 7 Camberley..was rather like a shocked maiden aunt, who had been forced to look on at something not quite ‘nice’. Maiden-auntishly she took up again the knitting of the Franco-German War. 1938 W. S. Maugham Summing Up 176, I..ask myself whether in another forty years the bright young things of current letters will appear as jejune as do now their maiden aunts of The Yellow Book. 1975 Harper's & Queen May 137/3 As for aged relations, maiden aunts in whose name so much is suffered, Miss Charlton hasn't got any. |