Word.ws English Dictionary

moss-maiden

moss-maiden noun: a young female of the moss-folk.

Noun

moss-maiden (plural moss-maidens)

  1. (Germanic) A young female of the moss-folk.
    • Urselberg became her retreat as the good fairy mother; but the attractions of herself and her moss-maidens, which the Church wished to borrow, were taken on a long voyage to Rome, and there transmuted to St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins.1881, Moncure Daniel Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, volume II, New York: Henry Holt and Company, page 379
    • In pouring out of a dish, when drops hang on the edge, don't brush them off, they belong to the moss-maiden.1888, Jacob Grimm, translated by James Steven Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology, volume IV, London: George Bell and Sons, page 1427

Forms of moss-maiden

pluralmoss-maidens

Origin of moss-maiden

Calque of German Moosfräulein.

Questions about moss-maiden

What does moss-maiden mean?
Moss-maiden means a young female of the moss-folk.
What part of speech is moss-maiden?
Moss-maiden is a noun.
What is the plural of moss-maiden?
The plural of moss-maiden is moss-maidens.

Words near moss-maiden in the dictionary

  1. moss-draped
  2. moss-folk
  3. moss-grown
  4. moss-hag
  5. moss-hags
  6. moss-maiden
  7. moss-maidens
  8. moss-people
  9. moss-trooper
  10. moss-troopers
  11. moss-trooping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: moss-maiden (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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