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A handmaiden (nowadays less commonly handmaid or maidservant) is a personal maid or female servant. [1] The term is also used metaphorically for something whose primary role is to serve or assist. [1] Depending on culture or historical period, a handmaiden may be of enslaved status or may be simply an employee. The terms handmaiden and handmaid ...
In Europe, the development of the office of lady-in-waiting is connected to that of the development of a royal court. During the Carolingian Empire, in the 9th century, Hincmar describes the royal household of Charles the Bald in the De Ordine Palatii, from 882, in which he states that court officials took orders from the queen as well as the king.
Like Latin puer, the word was early used as a name for any boy or lad employed as a servant, and so of male servants in general (Chaucer: Pardoners Tale, 1. 204), and especially a journeyman. The current use of the word "knave" for "a man who is dishonest and crafty, a rogue", was however an early usage, and is found in Layamon (c. 1205).
Maids were once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses, where the retinue of servants stretched up to the housekeeper and butler, responsible for female and male employees respectively. It was the best and most common way that women could earn money, especially lower class women. [ 5 ]
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In 2015, the International Labour Organization (ILO), based on national surveys or censuses of 232 countries and territories, estimated the number of domestic workers at 67.1 million, [3] but the ILO itself states that "experts say that due to the fact that this kind of work is often hidden and unregistered, the total number of domestic workers could be as high as 100 million". [4]
The original Greek says: οὖσαν διάκονον, ousan diakonon, being [the] [female] servant of the church at Cenchreae. The word "diakonon" means servant in nearly all of its 30 uses in the New Testament, but may also be used to refer to the church office of deacon. There is no scholarly consensus regarding whether the phrase here ...
A lady's companion might be taken on by an unmarried woman living on her own, by a widow, a married woman who lived with her husband and sons but had no daughters and desired female company, or by an unmarried woman who was living with her father or another male relation but had lost her mother, and was too old to have a governess.