Spinster tags "spinster" (meaning "...unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage") as "derogatory" and "a good example of the way in which a word acquires strong connotations to the extent that it can no longer be used in a neutral sense." The 1828 and 1913 editions of "Merriam Webster's Dictionary" defined spinster in two ways: "1. A woman who spins, or whose occupation is to spin. 2. Law: An unmarried or single woman." By the 1800s, the term had evolved to include women who chose not to marry. During that century middle-class spinsters, as well as
Spinster a television series. In Jane Austen's "Emma", the character Miss Bates is a spinster, and Austen (who never married) gives her stereotypical negative characteristics such as garrulousness. Bob Dylan's song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1963) tells the true story of a murder at a spinsters' ball in Baltimore in 1963. Paul McCartney, while in the band the Beatles, composed the hit song "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) about the loneliness and death of a spinster (though he never used the term in the lyrics). The country song "Delta Dawn", made famous by Tanya Tucker, overviews the plight of a woman