Spinster focused on a single lost love, destined to go unmarried unless the lover returns. Tina Fey's portrayal of her character Liz Lemon, on the hit NBC series "30 Rock", exemplifies another classic spinster stereotype. Lemon, a 40-something single woman whose relationships never seem to work out, has unrealistically high expectations for a male partner: her dream husband is the archetypal "Astronaut Mike Dexter", and for much of the series her character is holding out on settling on a man until she can score an astronaut. Unpopped popcorn kernels have been dubbed "old maids" in popular slang, since like unmarried women
Spinster this sense "is ... perceived as insulting. It implies negative qualities such as being fussy or undesirable". Also included is a sense of the word used specifically in a legal context: "a woman who has never married". Wordreference.com describes the "woman still unmarried" sense of 'spinster' as "dated". Age is a crucial part of the definition, according to Robin Lakoff's explanation in "Language and Woman's Place". "If someone is a spinster, by implication she is not eligible [to marry]; she has had her chance, and been passed by". "Hence, a girl of twenty cannot be properly called a spinster: she