2 June 2018
distaff
[dis-taf, -tahf]
noun
1. a staff with a cleft end for holding wool, flax, etc., from which the thread is drawn in spinning by hand.
2. a similar attachment on a spinning wheel.
3. Archaic.
a woman or women collectively.
women’s work.
adjective
4. Sometimes Offensive. noting, pertaining to, characteristic of, or suitable for a female.
See also distaff side.
Origin of distaff
Middle English, Old English
1000, before 1000; Middle English distaf, Old English distæf, equivalent to dis- (cognate with Low German diesse bunch of flax on a distaff; cf. dizen ) + stæf staff1
Usage note
A distaff is the stick onto which wool or flax is wound in spinning. Since spinning was traditionally done by females, distaff took on figurative meanings relating to women or women’s work. In the sense of “female,” the noun distaff is archaic, but the adjective is in current use: distaff chores, a distaff point of view; the distaff side of the family. Women who find the term offensive are probably aware of its origin in female stereotypes. Another current use of the adjective is in reference to horses: a distaff race is for fillies or mares.
Dictionary.com
Examples from the Web for distaff
Contemporary Examples
Indeed, the distaff vote may yet again break Republican this cycle—as it did in 2010—if the polls are to be believed.
The 2014 Election Is Yet Another Scrum in the Culture Wars
Lloyd Green
October 27, 2014
As Maggie in a 1990 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof she was more than just a slip of distaff Mississippi flesh.
Kathleen Turner’s New Broadway High
Kevin Sessums
April 17, 2011
Historical Examples
They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin.
The White Company
Arthur Conan Doyle
Anagram
stiff ad
daft ifs
sad tiff
fit fads
Today’s quote
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
– Albert Camus
On this day
2 June 1951 – birth of Gilbert Baker, American artist and gay rights activist, who designed the ‘rainbow flag’ in 1978 which came to symbolise the gay rights movement. Died 31 March 2017.
2 June 1953 – Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, England.
2 June 1965 – the first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives in Saigon to assist the American military in the Vietnam War.
2 June 1966 – The ‘Surveyor 1’ space probe lands on the moon. It is the first US space probe to do so. The Soviet Union had successfully landed a space probe, the Lunix 9, on the moon 5 months earlier, on 3 February 1966.