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Unmarried woman   /ənmˈɛrid wˈʊmən/   Listen
Unmarried woman

noun
1.
A woman who is not married.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unmarried woman" Quotes from Famous Books



... I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is an error, as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex, with this shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is in less general demand, she is apt to attach herself to one dear friend, always sure to be a lady in possession of fine country and city houses and other appurtenances of wealth, often of inferior social standing; ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... Horne, you see[163] ... With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in marriage, though not as much as women do; and on the other hand, the singleness of a man when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends of both sexes have been draining off into marriage these two years, scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I may end by saying that I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... when they stand before her judgment-seat, and old dreams, offspring of brains that were wrestling with slumber in the darkness, pass away as the dawn comes, bringing with it, too often, such revelations as are not altogether lovely to dwell on. In the fourteenth century an unmarried woman was a chattel, and belonged to somebody who had the right to sell her or to give her away. That is the naked truth. You may make a man an offender for a word if you will, and object that "sell" is an incorrect term; but the fact remains, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... has not absolutely enjoined it upon all. You may, therefore, be in the way of duty while neglecting it. And the apostle Paul hints that there may be, with those who enter into this state, a greater tendency of the heart towards earthly objects. There is also an increase of care. "The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but she that is married, careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." But much more has been made ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... with women we mean, sexual intercourse out of wedlock. The term applies either to intercourse between any man and a prostitute, between an unmarried man and a married woman, between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman or between a married man and a married woman not his wife. The term, illicit intercourse, applies to all sexual intercourse ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... Women enlarged.—In 1864 (on the 31st of October) the position of unmarried women was improved. According to the law that was then enacted, an unmarried woman...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... "a married woman cannot write such a letter as this to a young unmarried woman; it ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... dad; but no unmarried woman may venture outside the circumference of the family circle. That's the great European convention—the basic principle of ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... the independence of woman is irrevocably lost in the bonds of matrimony: if an unmarried woman is less constrained there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of freedom and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different conditions ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... knee, upon the knees of many uncles and aunts. She had only to consult them, and they would at once turn to the right page and read out an answer exactly suited to one in her position. The rules which should govern the behavior of an unmarried woman are written in red ink, graved upon marble, if, by some freak of nature, it should fall out that the unmarried woman has not the same writing scored upon her heart. She was ready to believe that some people are fortunate enough to reject, accept, resign, or lay down their lives at the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... the conclusion of the dance any man has the privilege of asking any unmarried woman through the messenger, if he might share her bed that night. If favorably inclined, she replies that he must bring a deerskin for bedding. He procures the deerskin, and presents it to her, and after the feast is over remains with her ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... realized, till he was gone, how much his loyal friendship had been to her. Yet she had hardly seen him for the last year, partly because she was absorbed in her book, and partly because, to her astonishment, she found that her brother and his wife looked coldly upon "an unmarried woman receiving ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... widower, Charles confessed that he had had a son in Germany by an unmarried woman. He had reason to wish that the boy should assume the robe of a reformed order, but he must be neither forced nor persuaded to do so. If he wished to remain in the world, he would settle upon him a yearly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... condemned her to celibacy, or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity is apparent when we consider the results. Absolute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. The ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... sorry, but it is absolutely contrary to our customs to permit a private interview between an unmarried woman and her suitor." ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... accommodate herself to others even in the matter of small differences. But George's road through space lay entirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest chance of interference. She was under the protection of a husband; she could do things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign land, she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small. This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give. She went regularly all her life to chapel with George, but even when he became deacon, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... the view of wiping out the last memory of the crime's locality, that my father renewed the interior of the room some twenty years ago. The only tradition which has been adhered to in connection with it is the one which has now been violated in your person—the one which precludes any unmarried woman from sleeping there. Except for that, the room has, as you know, lost all sinister reputation, and its title of 'haunted' has become purely conventional. Nevertheless, as I said, you are right—that is undoubtedly the room in which the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... that every woman knows what love really is? No; not even every unmarried woman. There are some among them, though I believe but few, who know nothing of what love is; and there are, undoubtedly, a multitude of wives who have experienced liking, preference, affection, and taken ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... wedding of Miss Lydia Herbert with her "ancient mariner," a seventy-year-old millionaire reputed to be as wealthy as Rockefeller,—was one of these "sensations"—chiefly on account of the fact that every unmarried woman young and old, and every widow, had been hunting him in vain for fully five years. Miss Herbert had been voted "no chance," because she made no secret of her extravagant tastes in dress and jewels,—yet despite ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... since all history and observation go to prove that the great final end of creation, whatever it may be, can only be achieved through the perpetuity and increasing progress of the race, it follows that unmarried woman is not the most necessary, the indispensable type of woman. If there were no other class of females left upon the earth but the women who do not bear children, then the world would be a failure, creation would ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... unmarried woman to dream of being in childbed, denotes unhappy changes from honor ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... also," he tells us, "between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Of course, it is contended that these things have tended to the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... the children entrusted to their care for perverse, sadistic acts. I may recall the Graubund scandal of September 1906, in which girls and women were whipped by an acolyte until the blood ran; also an affair which occurred in Christiania about fourteen years ago, where, at a home kept by an unmarried woman, for children from the age of two years until their confirmation, a horrible and elaborate system of punishments was in use, whippings and other tortures being the order of the day. In many biographies and other works giving descriptions of life in the cloister, we find additional details: for ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... [7:32] But I wish you to be without cares. The unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, how he shall please the Lord; [7:33]but he that is married cares for the things of the world, how he shall please the wife. [7:34]And the wife and the virgin are different; the unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; but she that is married cares for the things of the world, how she shall please the husband. [7:35]But I say this for your own profit; not to impose a snare on you, but for ...
— The New Testament • Various

... hidden judge repeated, "with any female of your choice. It is a high reward, since men outnumber women on Omega by six to one. You may pick any unmarried woman, willing or unwilling. I will grant you three days in which to ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... were coming to us unannounced by any previous communication to our holy mother? And coming alone on the night train! You possess a noble courage, my child, but the adventure was hazardous to a young and lovely unmarried woman. The Virgin be praised we met you when we did!" said the Sister, devoutly ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... Every unmarried woman, without exception of class, wears a distinctive feature on her dress. The drapery is fixed with a jewel to the right shoulder, and the right arm is bare. On the other hand, the married woman's arms are always covered with falling drapery, though by ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... trailed his food or his prey, I have in me the instinct of the chase. Were I a man I should be a trapper of criminals, trailing them as relentlessly as no doubt my sheepskin ancestor did his wild boar. But being an unmarried woman, with the handicap of my sex, my first acquaintance with crime will probably be my last. Indeed, it came near enough to being my ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... system of public prostitution prevailed in Babylonia. Every unmarried woman was compelled to remain in the sacred enclosure of Mylitta—by which Istar is apparently meant—until some stranger had submitted to her embraces, while the sums derived from the sale of their personal charms by the handsome and ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... husband gives a widow some advantage over a spinster; the very debts her husband left afford her something to boast about to the unmarried woman who has only her own ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland

... of her that at that moment she scarcely knew the weight of her own remorse. It sat lightly on her shoulders then, and it was only later on, when her beauty began to fade, when years came and brought no joy for the middle-aged unmarried woman, that she began to realise what it was that she had to carry through life with her. At that moment a thousand other thoughts filled her mind—such thoughts as one would expect to find there. How was the world ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... England, male and female, and take whatever comes first—be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age (for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, is about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;—Be it a landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... to his person. What she experienced in this respect was no doubt heightened by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... the cases a dead child, not come to its full time, was found laying between the unhappy mother's limbs; and in the other, a very large dead child was discovered, only half born. Such instances will sufficiently shew what a patient and fixed resolution the fear of shame will produce. A young unmarried woman, having concealed her pregnancy, was delivered during the night by herself. She was suspected; the room was searched, and the child was found in her box, wrapped up in wet clothes. She confessed that the child was hers, but denied the ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter

... women at the present day, Dr. Thomson, in "The Land and the Book," says: "They paint their cheeks, putting tahl around their eyes, arching their eyebrows with the same, and stain their hands and feet with henna thus to deck themselves, and should an unmarried woman do so, an impression is conveyed highly injurious ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Jones's mother, when a young unmarried woman, started one evening from a house called Tyddyn Heilyn, Penrhyndeudraeth, to her home, Penrhyn isaf, accompanied by their servant man, David Williams, called on account of his great strength and stature, Dafydd Fawr, Big David. David was carrying home on his ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... If an unmarried woman proves with child the man against whom the fact is proved must marry her; and they pay to the proattins a joint fine of twenty dollars and a buffalo. This fine, if the parties agree to it, may be levied in the country by the neighbouring ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... Maslova was a very common one. Maslova was the daughter of an unmarried menial who lived with her mother, a cowherd, on the estate of two spinsters. This unmarried woman gave birth to a child every year, and, as is the custom in the villages, baptized them; then neglected the troublesome newcomers, and they finally ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... principal parties concerned; but even then the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects. The cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was an age neither of religion nor of chivalry. Dowers were more thought of than devotion in convents as elsewhere. Whitby being one of the oldest and grandest foundations was sure to be inaccessible to a ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The watch, overhearing Borachio's report of his villainy, are able to change the tragedy to comedy. Leonato, hearing Claudio's report of Hero, is ready to cast off his child. Report is shown to be stronger than any human affection and any acquired quality, except the love of one unmarried woman for another, and that strongest of all earthly things, the fool in authority. The wisdom of Shakespeare is greater and more various than the brains of little men can imagine. It is one of the tragical things, that this great man, who interpreted the ways of fate in glorious, many-coloured ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... fashioned in your prejudices, Miss Warren. I feel bound to tell you, speaking as an artist, and believing that the most intimate human relationships are far beyond and above the scope of the law, that though I know that your mother is an unmarried woman, I do not respect her the less on that account. I respect ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... and vita sexualis are on the wane or are extinct. Voltaire cynically, though truthfully, observes that when woman is no longer pleasing to man she then turns to God. A woman who has been disappointed in love almost invariably seeks consolation in religion. The virtuous unmarried woman, who has been unsuccessful in the pursuit of a husband, invariably turns to God and religion with impassioned ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir



Words linked to "Unmarried woman" :   old maid, spinster, adult female, woman, signorina



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