Handmaiden
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of handmaid. alt-of, alternative
"Online and over Shabbat dinners, arguments about the election have grown bitter. Those grudgingly planning to vote for Labour have been called traitors to the community and self-hating Jews. Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit."
- 2 a personal maid or female attendant wordnet
- 3 A cisgender woman who supports transgender rights. derogatory
"The fact that it is not possible to be seen as a supporter of trans people's human rights, as all feminists are or at least should be, unless we fully capitulate and take the metaphorical – and sometimes literal – boot in the face shows how extreme trans activists, enabled by their handmaiden allies, are nothing but a misogynistic men’s rights movement."
- 4 in a subordinate position wordnet
Example
More examples"In 1492 Antonio de Nebrija said that language is the handmaiden of empire."
Etymology
From Middle English hande mayden, handmaiden, hand mayden, hand-mayden, handmayden, hondemaiden, hond maydyn, hoondmaydyn. By surface analysis, hand + maiden. Sense 2 is an allusion to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), in which "handmaids" are women who serve the male commanders in a patriarchal dystopia.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.