maid-of-all-work
maid-of-all-work noun: a female servant employed to do general housework.
Noun
maid-of-all-work (plural maids-of-all-work)
- A female servant employed to do general housework.
- Now this honest little fellow being a bachelor, keeps but one servant, which he calls a maid of all work. When he gets drunk, which doth not happen above seven times a week, he is never so happy as when he is expatiating on the virtues of this virgin of his, especially her sobriety.1770, Thomas Bridges, chapter 7, in The Adventures of a Bank-Note, volume 3, London: T. Davies, published 1771, page 54
- The Irish maid Betty Flanagan’s bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the doings of her former household […] about which the good lady talked a...1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “38”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
- Any person who does a wide range of jobs in a supportive role; a thing that serves a wide range of purposes.
- These colossal changes necessitate an attempt to adapt the constitution of 1789 to an entirely different kind of civilization from the one for which it was planned. The only significant change made to meet this new civilization is the great American maid-of-all-work, the Inter-State Commerce...1916, Charles Zueblin, “Rejuvenating the Constitution”, in Yale Law Journal, volume 25, page 218
- Sir GEORGE CAVE is the Ministerial maid-of-all-work. Whenever there is a disagreeable or awkward measure to introduce it falls to the Quite-at-Home Secretary, if I may borrow an expression coined by my friend, TOBY, M.P., for one of Sir GEORGE’S predecessors.1917 February 28, “Essence of Parliament”, in Punch, volume 152, page 143
Examples of maid-of-all-work in a sentence
- […] it is difficult to define with clearness the exact duties of the maid-of-all-work.1904, Christine Terhune Herrick, chapter 4, in The Expert Maid-Servant, Harper & Bros.:
- The only significant change made to meet this new civilization is the great American maid-of-all-work, the Inter-State Commerce Commission.1916, Charles Zueblin, “Rejuvenating the Constitution”, in Yale Law Journal, volume 25, page 218:
- The German told us he had been three years in Afghanistan and six months in Mazar, where he acts as maid-of-all-work for bridges, canals, roads, and building in general.1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, Chapter:
- At the other extreme, we have that true maid-of-all-work type, the 0-6-0, the mainstay of goods, shunting, and often of passenger work right from the earliest days to the present time.1945 November and December, H. C. Casserley, “Random Reflections on British Locomotive Types—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 319:
Forms of maid-of-all-work
| plural | maids-of-all-work |
|---|---|
| alternative form | maid of all work |
Questions about maid-of-all-work
- What does maid-of-all-work mean?
- Maid-of-all-work means a female servant employed to do general housework.
- How do you use maid-of-all-work in a sentence?
- […] it is difficult to define with clearness the exact duties of the maid-of-all-work.
- What part of speech is maid-of-all-work?
- Maid-of-all-work is a noun.
- What is the plural of maid-of-all-work?
- The plural of maid-of-all-work is maids-of-all-work.
Words near maid-of-all-work in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: maid-of-all-work (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: “maid-of-all-work.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/maid-of-all-work. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.