maidenhair

From maiden +‎ hair.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmeɪdənhɛː/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmeɪdənhɛəɹ/

maidenhair (countable and uncountable, plural maidenhairs)

1. (uncountable, poetic) A girl or woman's pubic hair.
   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:

     He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's into the bowl

   • 1979, Georgianna Bell, Passionate Jade, page 326:

     His fingers tore at her maidenhair. Gasping, she recoiled for long enough to allow him entry.

   • 1987, Pierre Clitandre, Cathedral of the August Heat, page 152:

     Some said they'd seen her over by Death's-Door, with bloodstains on her dress, which was so white and transparent they were seized with shame and fear at the faint beauty of her breasts and the eternal modesty of her maidenhair.

   • 1989, Robert Solotaroff, Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short Fiction, page 116:

     She grabbed at her maidenhair as the garment eluded her frantic grasp and formed a puddle of cloth at her feet.

   • 2013, John F. Deane, Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill: New and Selected Poems:

     She turns and her small breasts are firm in the fading light, the flower of her navel, the darkening delta of her maidenhair and her thighs rising out of the water, the water tiny golden gifts against her skin;

2. Either of two species of genus Adiantum of fern with delicate, hair-like stalks, especially Adiantum capillus-veneris.
   • 1653, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physician Enlarged, Folio Society, published 2007, page 178:

     Our common Maidenhair does from a number of hard black fibres, send forth a great many blacking shining brittle stalks, hardly a span long [...].

3. (Canada, US, now regional) Either of two ericaceous plants, the creeping snowberry or the checkerberry.

• maiden-hair

• (fern): maidenhair fern