why is an old unmarried woman called a spinster?

Answer 1

Single women had few choices available to them if they did not marry. Unmarried women typically lived with relatives. A lady would spend her time spinning flax and wool for the family; hence the name spinster. Other epithets such as thornback, stale Maid and antique virgin were also given.

Answer 2

Old Unmarried Woman

Answer 3

I think it has something to do with how the old sewing machines were made and the fact that old ladies are known for sewing things. The old sewing machines had a wheel on them that spun as you were doing the sewing. So seeing as how the kind of old lady being mentioned is unmarried-calling her a spinster must mean that she has nothing to do but sew since she has no husband to take care of or watch after.

Answer 4

It is a deragatory and outmoded word that ought to be dropped form the language. And it used to be if you were 25 and UNMARRIED, you were known as a spinster, but that was way back in the early 1900s.

Answer 5

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Spinster is an old fashioned word for an unmarried woman. (It comes from the practice if spinning wool into thread, which was the daughter's job in the home in times past.)

Answer 6

A common job for widows or women who just hadn't married yet in the colonial times was working at the spinning wheel prepping the wool. Once they were married or if they had a husband, they didn't need to work. Hence the title "Spinster". It was only negative if you had never married. Early Puritan society thought that a woman without children was a waste.

Answer 7

This word derives from the word spin, as in to spin yarn from wool. "Any woman who spun wool for a living was known as a spinster beginning in about the 13th century. Eventually, the word came to be appended to a woman's name as an indication of her occupation. By the 17th century the term was used to signify any unmarried woman, and it was used in legal documents for that purpose. Later, however, spinster came to apply to older, unmarried women. This association likely occurred because the older a single woman was, the longer she had been known as so-and-so spinster.

Spin itself has very old roots; it derives from the Indo-European base *spen-/*pen- "stretch". Some of spin's relatives are English span and Old Church Slavonic peti "stretch". Some of its near relatives are spider and spindle.
In genealogy, the spindle-side of the family is the female line, as opposed to the spear-side, which is the male line. The spindle-side is also known as the distaff-side, distaff being an older word for spindle."

Answer 8

This word comes down from generations ago when if a woman was over the age of 25 she was past the age to marry and no man wanted her. It was a sexist word and there was no such word to describe a man in the same situation.

Answer 9

Shes not. Old maid. A spincter is an old very cheap rich woman who would rather a por person pay her way then pay her own.

Answer 10

I like "Old Maid" personally.