maid
UK[meɪd]US[meɪd]
n
A female servant in a house or hotel.
n
A girl or young woman, especially an unmarried one (archaic or literary).
Etymology
The word 'maid' originates from the Middle English 'maide', an aphetic form (loss of an initial unstressed vowel) of 'maiden'. 'Maiden' itself comes from Old English 'mægden', meaning a young unmarried woman or a virgin, which is a diminutive form of 'mægð', meaning 'maiden, virgin, girl'. This Old English term is related to the Old High German 'magad' and the Gothic 'magaths', all pointing to a Proto-Germanic root magadiz, meaning 'young woman'. The core semantic thread from its ancient roots to modern usage connects the concept of youth and female gender, which narrowed in Middle English to specify an unmarried woman and later, by the 1300s, extended to a female domestic servant, typically young and unmarried.
Analysis
The word 'maid' is a simplex word derived from the Middle English 'maide', a shortened form of 'maiden'. It is not productively segmentable into distinct, meaningful morphemes in modern English.
Examples
The maid comes every Tuesday to clean the house.
In the old tale, the brave knight rescued the fair maid from the tower.
She worked as a hotel maid during the summer to pay for her studies.