👵 Unmarried woman 🃏 A card game 🌸 A garden plant

old maid

1 5.5

A simple card game or the player who loses by holding an unmatched card

noun
/oʊld meɪd/

: juego de la vieja

She laughed as her brother became the old maid for the third time in a row.

Examples

We gathered around the table to play a lively game of old maid with friends.
At the end of the evening, Emily was stuck as the old maid again.
No one wanted to be the old maid when the game ended.
We played old maid last night.
Have you ever played old maid?
As the last player, she anxiously waited to see if she would end up with the old maid card.
During family game night, the children always want to play old maid after dinner.

Synonyms

card game

vsold maid

43 1.1

A game played with playing cards, for example poker, that often needs skill or luck

is a specific version where players avoid holding one unmatched card

Surface Forms

old maid singular

old maids plural

Morphology

old + maid

The core meaning 'an older woman who has never married' is directly compositional from 'old' (older) + 'maid' (unmarried/young woman), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the referent. The negative or old-fashioned connotations are pragmatic/cultural nuances that may require extra exposure, but they do not prevent basic transparent decoding of the expression.

Etymology

Old maid (card game) comes from a simple matching game where players pair cards and try not to be left with the one odd card. That odd card was called the 'old maid', so the player holding it 'lost'.