spinstress

English

Etymology

spinster +‎ -ess

Noun

spinstress (plural spinstresses)

1. (obsolete) A woman who spins.
   • 1685, Tom Brown, A Paraphrase on Horace of Vides et Alta:

     Let meaner Souls by Virtue be cajold, As the good Grecian Spinstress was of old

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “spinstress”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)