Word.ws English Dictionary

mermayde

mermayde is the obsolete spelling of mermaid.

Meaning of mermaid

Noun

mermaid (plural mermaids)

  1. A mythological creature with a woman's head and upper body, and a tail of a fish.
    • Search the depth, & ſee that variety of Sea monſters & fiſhes, Mare-maids, Sea men, Horſes, &c. which it affords.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section...
  2. Coloured a brilliant turquoise.
    • a mermaid smoothie
  3. (obsolete) A prostitute.
    • A Gentleman or an honeſt Cittizen, ſhall not Sit in your pennie-bench Theaters, vvith his Squirrell by his ſide cracking nuttes; nor ſneake into a Tauerne vvith his Mermaid; but he ſhall be Satyr'd and Epigram'd vpon, and his humour muſt run vpo'th Stage: […]1601 (first performance), Thomas Dekker, Satiro-mastix. Or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet. […], London: […] [Edward Allde] for Edward White, […], published 1602, →OCLC, signature H2, recto

Forms of mermayde

pluralmermaydes

Questions about mermayde

What is mermayde the obsolete spelling of?
Mermayde is the obsolete spelling of mermaid.

Words near mermayde in the dictionary

  1. mermaidweed
  2. mermaidweeds
  3. mermaidy
  4. merman
  5. Mermanesque
  6. mermayde
  7. mermaydes
  8. Mermelstein
  9. Mermelsteins
  10. mermen
  11. mermin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mermayde (page history and authors); mermaid (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: “mermayde.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mermayde. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.