The German phrase alte Jungfer (spinster) is a pejorative term usually denoting an older woman who has never married. The word Jungfer appeared in the 14th century as a shortened form of MHG jungvrouw (a term designating the social status of a girl of noble birth, a young mistress, a sexually inviolate woman); after the 17th and 18th centuries, it denoted unmarried bourgeois daughters (also as a form of address); toward the end of the 18th century, it also denoted higher level servants (Kammerjungfer…