ice maiden
1
8.8
- noun
- /aɪs ˈmeɪdən/
- Offensive
:
mujer fría
- Despite her beauty, her friends warned that she was an ice maiden who never let anyone get close.
Examples
-
But Sydney was prettier, in that frigid ice-maiden way, and she knew how to use her looks—a trick that Marlise has never quite mastered.
Fiction book (1998) -
I'm a humorless ice maiden in need ofa good humping.
-
Many people described her as an ice maiden because she rarely showed any emotions.
-
After years of keeping her feelings hidden, she was often labeled an ice maiden by those around her.
Synonyms
5
7.6
A person who is distant and not friendly
3
8.5
A woman who seems cold and not open about her feelings
A woman who seems emotionally cold, often a very skilled ice skater
Antonyms
How Warm
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun combines 'ice' (metaphorical coldness) with 'maiden' (woman) in a straightforward adjective‑noun pattern, so the sense 'emotionally cold or distant woman' is directly inferable from the constituents. The metaphor of physical coldness = emotional coldness is common across languages, making the expression accessible to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
Ice maiden gives the image of a woman who seems made of ice: beautiful but very cold and not showing feeling, and maiden means a young woman. So the phrase describes someone who is 'emotionally cold' or distant.