Is there a word for "maiden" ?

[geordief]

On a different forum someone is asking whether the english word "maiden" has an exact equivalent elsewhere.

It encapsulates the two idea of both "young woman" and "virgin"

I said that I didn't think that "koρe" (which he knows from the kouρos/koρη statues meant more than just "young woman" (sometimes they carry a lotus to signify virginity)

Was I right?

 

[Clemens]

On a different forum someone is asking whether the english word "maiden" has an exact equivalent elsewhere.

It encapsulates the two idea of both "young woman" and "virgin"

I said that I didn't think that "koρe" (which he knows from the kouρos/koρη statues meant more than just "young woman" (sometimes they carry a lotus to signify virginity)

Was I right?

I don't think the two concepts were different historically; unmarried young women, both in pagan Rome and in the Christian world which succeeded it, were assumed or expected to be what we now call virgins. Maiden, being a somewhat archaic term in modern English, has retained this assumption. Virgin, on the other hand, has come to mean specifically and only a lack of sexual experience, which it didn't always have, probably partly from the influence of Christianity and its insistence (in some forms) on the virginity of Mary (and some other female saints) as being a physical state as opposed to a moral one.

 

[Iáson]

I think uirgō is quite similar, and in Greek παρθένος.

Both uirgō and παρθένος are used on occasion for women who are unmarried but have had sex. On the other hand they can refer to not having had sex in certain contexts; consider the following quote from Alkiphron's Letters of Courtesans:

οὗτος γάρ με διεπαρθένευσεν ἐκ γειτόνων οἰκοῦσαν.
'For this man took my virginity when I lived next door to him.'

The speaker is a prostitute and marriage is not in question.

The English word 'virgin' is now (as Clemens says) quite technical in meaning (i.e. for someone with no experience of sex). As for 'maiden', I have perhaps never heard it used to describe any real, living person; but I don't think it has a strong connection with whether someone has had sex or not; though I think the expression 'maidenhood' can sometimes mean 'virginity'. Rather, I would say it is more opposed to married women. As such, I think 'maiden' is relatively close to uirgō/παρθένος (except that these words are common, but 'maiden' is rather obsolete).