Word.ws English Dictionary

comely maidens

comely maidens noun: an outdated stereotype of Irish women; used as a reference to misogynistic opinions.

Noun

comely maidens pl (plural only)

  1. (Ireland, plural, plural-only) An outdated stereotype of Irish women; used as a reference to misogynistic opinions.
    • He was surprised to see so many women workers. What did he expect, comely maidens?

Origin of comely maidens

Incorrectly attributed to a speech by Irish statesman Éamon de Valera. A longer version is often misquoted as "comely maidens, dancing at the crossroads". The actual phrase, delivered in a radio broadcast on St. Patrick's Day 1943, mentions "the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age." See Wikipedia article.

Questions about comely maidens

What does comely maidens mean?
Comely maidens means an outdated stereotype of Irish women; used as a reference to misogynistic opinions.
What part of speech is comely maidens?
Comely maidens is a noun.

Words near comely maidens in the dictionary

  1. comeling
  2. comelings
  3. Comella
  4. Comellas
  5. comely
  6. comely maidens
  7. comelyness
  8. comember
  9. comembers
  10. comembership
  11. comemberships

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: comely maidens (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “comely maidens.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/comely_maidens. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.