Maid vs. Mistress — What's the Difference?
Difference Between Maid and Mistress
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Maid
A maid, or housemaid or maidservant, is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work.
Mistress
A woman who has a continuing sexual relationship with a man who is married to someone else.
Maid
A female domestic servant
Mary eventually managed to find a job as a maid
Mistress
A woman in a position of authority, control, or ownership, as the head of a household
"Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall" (Jane Austen).
Maid
An unmarried girl or young woman.
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Mistress
A woman who owns or keeps an animal
A cat sitting in its mistress's lap.
Maid
An unmarried girl or woman.
Mistress
A woman who owns a slave.
Maid
A woman or girl who is a virgin.
Mistress
A woman with ultimate control over something
The mistress of her own mind.
Maid
A housemaid or chambermaid.
Mistress
A nation or country that has supremacy over others
Great Britain, once the mistress of the seas.
Maid
A woman servant.
Mistress
Something personified as female that directs or reigns
"my mistress ... the open road" (Robert Louis Stevenson).
Maid
A girl or an unmarried young woman; maiden.
Mistress
A woman who has mastered a skill or branch of learning
A mistress of the culinary art.
Maid
A female servant or cleaner (short for maidservant).
Mistress
Mistress Used formerly as a courtesy title when speaking to or of a woman.
Maid
(archaic) A virgin, now female but originally one of either gender.
Mistress
Chiefly British A woman schoolteacher.
Maid
An unmarried woman; usually, a young unmarried woman; esp., a girl; a virgin; a maiden.
Would I had died a maid,And never seen thee, never borne thee son.
Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me.
Mistress
A woman, specifically one with great control, authority or ownership
Male equivalent: master
She was the mistress of the estate-mansion, and owned the horses.
Maid
A man who has not had sexual intercourse.
Christ was a maid and shapen as a man.
Mistress
A female teacher
Male equivalent: master
Games mistress
Maid
A female servant.
Spinning amongst her maids.
Mistress
The other woman in an extramarital relationship, generally including sexual relations
Maid
The female of a ray or skate, esp. of the gray skate (Raia batis), and of the thornback (Raia clavata).
Mistress
A dominatrix
Male equivalent: master
Maid
A female domestic
Mistress
A woman well skilled in anything, or having the mastery over it
Maid
An unmarried girl (especially a virgin)
Mistress
A woman regarded with love and devotion; a sweetheart
Mistress
(Scotland) A married woman; a wife
Mistress
(obsolete) The jack in the game of bowls
Mistress
A female companion to a master a man with control, authority or ownership
Mistress
Female equivalent of master
Mistress
Female equivalent of mister
Mistress
Of a woman: to master; to learn or develop to a high degree of proficiency.
Mistress
(intransitive) To act or take the role of a mistress.
Mistress
A woman having power, authority, or ownership; a woman who exercises authority, is chief, etc.; the female head of a family, a school, etc.
The late queen's gentlewoman! a knight's daughter!To be her mistress' mistress!
Mistress
A woman well skilled in anything, or having the mastery over it.
A letter desires all young wives to make themselves mistresses of Wingate's Arithmetic.
Mistress
A woman regarded with love and devotion; she who has command over one's heart; a beloved object; a sweetheart.
Mistress
A woman filling the place, but without the rights, of a wife; a woman having an ongoing usually exclusive sexual relationship with a man, who may provide her with financial support in return; a concubine; a loose woman with whom one consorts habitually; as, both his wife and his mistress attended his funeral.
Mistress
A title of courtesy formerly prefixed to the name of a woman, married or unmarried, but now superseded by the contracted forms, Mrs., for a married, and Miss, for an unmarried, woman.
Now Mistress Gilpin (careful soul).
Mistress
A married woman; a wife.
Several of the neighboring mistresses had assembled to witness the event of this memorable evening.
Mistress
The old name of the jack at bowls.
Mistress
To wait upon a mistress; to be courting.
Mistress
An adulterous woman; a woman who has an ongoing extramarital sexual relationship with a man
Mistress
A woman schoolteacher (especially one regarded as strict)
Mistress
A woman master who directs the work of others
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