少女的狀態，和身體上的那個記號
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virginity · noun
An old word for the state of a girl or woman who has never had sex. Today people usually say virginity instead, and maidenhead turns up mostly in old plays, poems and songs.
童貞；處女之身
One way to hold this word: read its two parts. Maiden is an old word for a young woman, and -head is the old shape of -hood, the ending that names a state. So the word says 'the condition of being a maiden'. Old writers then let the same word point at the body, because they treated the physical sign and the condition as one thing.
可以想成：把這個字拆成兩半來看。maiden 是「未婚的年輕女子」，-head 是 -hood 的老形式，用來表示「…的狀態」。合起來就是「身為少女的那個狀態」。舊時的作者又讓同一個字指向身體，因為在他們的寫法裡，身體上的記號和那個狀態常常被當成同一件事。今天英文把兩邊分開了：狀態說 virginity，身體部位說 hymen，這個字則留在舊書裡。
From the word’s history
From maiden + -head. The ending goes back to Old English -hād, the same element that became modern -hood, which names a state or condition.
這個字由 maiden 加上 -head 組成。-head 來自古英文的 -hād，也就是今天 -hood 的前身，表示「…的狀態」，所以字面上指向「身為 maiden 的狀態」。
Wiktionary, "maidenhead"
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