maypole

/ˈmeɪˌpoʊl/

maypole noun: a pole, garlanded with streamers held by people who dance around it to celebrate May Day.

Image: Reinhold Möller Ermell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

maypole (plural maypoles)

A pole, garlanded with streamers held by people who dance around it to celebrate May Day.
- How would you like the maypole decorated?
- The maypole, the focal point of many traditional spring games and festivities, is believed to be a relic of ancient phallic worship.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 149
(idiomatic) A very tall girl or young lady.
A maypole-like structure of sticks placed about a sapling in the bowers of certain species of bowerbird.
- The male Golden Bowerbird is a beautiful bird that builds one of the greatest structures in the natural world, a maypole up to three metres tall constructed of sticks and festooned with decorative clusters of flowers and lichens.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 212
(euphemistic) A penis, especially a large one.
- and now, disengag'd from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ'd, it must have belong'd to a young giant.1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC

maypole (third-person singular simple present maypoles, present participle maypoling, simple past and past participle maypoled)

To dance or spin in a circle around something.
- Kristina quieted a little, and maypoled around me.2010, Julie Clark, Asperger's in Pink, page 223
- The line jerked and maypoled itself around the rod.2011, Simon Brett, Cast in Order of Disappearance

Maypole

A surname.
A settlement on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall (OS grid ref SV9211).
A settlement near the village of Chelsfield, borough of Bromley, Greater London (OS grid ref TQ4963).
A village in Dartford borough, Kent (OS grid ref TQ5173).
A settlement in Hoath parish, Canterbury district, Kent (OS grid ref TR2064).
A settlement in Whitecastle community, Monmouthshire, Wales (OS grid ref SO4716).

pole, garlanded with streamers held by people who dance around it to celebrate May Day: عَمُود الرَّقْص ʕamūd ar-raqṣ

The seemingly innocent Maypole is a relic of witchcraft.1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 93:
At Ickwell Green, in Bedfordshire, there is a permanent maypole.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 263:

Noun
plural	maypoles
alternative form	may-pole
Verb
third-person singular present	maypoles
present participle	maypoling
past participle	maypoled
past	maypoled

Compound of May + pole, so called in reference to its use on May Day.

What does maypole mean?: Maypole means a pole, garlanded with streamers held by people who dance around it to celebrate May Day.
What is maypole in Arabic?: Maypole in Arabic is عَمُود الرَّقْص (ʕamūd ar-raqṣ). See Maypole meaning in Arabic.
How do you use maypole in a sentence?: The seemingly innocent Maypole is a relic of witchcraft.
What part of speech is maypole?: Maypole can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce maypole?: Maypole is pronounced /ˈmeɪˌpoʊl/ (US).
What is the plural of maypole?: The plural of maypole is maypoles.

Adapted from Wiktionary: maypole (page history and authors); Maypole (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-maypole.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-maypole.wav.

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