spinster

But she brushed off the barbs, saying: "I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell."

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026

“I’m a geriatric pregnant spinster who puts crystals in her bra,” Helen says in an unusual moment of self-awareness.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025

"She's described in the record as a spinster," said Prof English.

From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2024

"Look at me," she declares to her spinster daughters in one scene.

From Salon ● May 6, 2023

To many people the very word conjures up memories of choking on chalk dust and cowering in fear of a thwack on the knuckles from a spinster schoolteacher.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

"This is the nature of the debate on things this big, like tax reform," Ryan said."You've got pundits and spinsters and all of this spinmeisters out there, you know, confusing the public."

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2017

For the Lowells, it turns out, are a fascinating bunch: spinsters, ministers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, factory builders, poets, college presidents and soldiers.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 18, 2017

Into this breach steps Bolick, offering her own story as inspiration to other spinsters, but it’s sometimes confusing how she thinks it could help.

From Slate ● Apr. 9, 2015

All of this, riveting in itself, underlines the breadth of Austen's experience of life; spinsters in vicarages know more of the human condition at first hand than might be imagined.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 8, 2013

How could we have guessed as we sat there—two middle-aged spinsters and an old man— that in place of memories were about to be given adventures such as we had never dreamed of?

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom