Distaff
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Erin:
June 27th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Are those half-million hits talking about women, or about, y’know, distaffs? Wrist distaffs are popular with drop spindle spinners, while a lot of spinning wheels for sale today have optional distaffs to attach to them. There are pages on how to dress distaffs, pages on how to spin from distaffs, pages of people selling handmade distaffs. For comparison, “scutching” gets 147,000 hits on Google, and far fewer people involved in the fiber arts are doing scutching than are using a distaff.
john:
January 24th, 2015 at 12:10 pm
I am afraid I have to disagree with the origin of the word Distaff, it was and has always been a tool used to hold wool or flax etc for the spinner. There are many different types and styles, for example free standing or ones that tuck in the belt etc. Flax distaffs differ from ones used for wool they usualy have a cone like bit at the top to hold the flax. Nothing to do with weaving
Lowell Thomas:
October 4th, 2016 at 4:48 pm
Speaking of “public radio pedants”, your first paragraph strikes me as highly pedantic. I fail to see that ‘distaff’ evokes all the dubious images you suggest, but that’s just me.
Barbara Hill:
March 10th, 2017 at 6:00 pm
We live in a mechanized, tech world very different from our ancestors. Women spent hours every day spinning. Before there were the pump style spinning wheel we think of today, there was the walking wheel, and before that the drop spindle. Probably many more. So with all these hours of work stories started to be told to children or family….there are over 1000 fairy tales that have a spinning wheel featured. You can see why the spinning wheel and parts of it became synonymous with a woman.
In colonial times in the North America the British taxed the Colonies by the family by a large amount of spun wool. The British had just started having mechanized looms and needed great quantities of spun wool. ( It takes 3 women full spinning full time to provide enough fiber to keep the weaver busy! The weaver who had the loom, was a man!) Anyway in order to provide that much wool the family would get an unmarried woman,( often we think of the old maid aunt, who had no provision from a husband.)
And she would spin wool all year long. She was called a Spinster, which defined her job. It later was used to define an unmarried woman.
Joanne Wilson:
July 29th, 2017 at 9:32 am
I heard the term ‘Distaff’ applied to a female character derived from a male one – for example Bat-Girl is a distaff of Batman or Silk is distaff of Spider-Man.
It may be a tad rude to use the word – but in the case of Silk it’s actually literally what she is a derivative feminisation of Peter Parker; bitten by the same spider and working for the same company for example as Peter did.
Though perhaps there needs to be an appropriate word for a Male Character derived from a female one too.
Just though i’d chip in that other usage though as a point of possible interest.
Dan Mc Knight:
August 28th, 2017 at 4:53 pm
Kind of sorry I asked………..but enlightening
Marie:
March 11th, 2018 at 8:35 pm
‘Distaff’ a reeking, creepy word!?! Balderdash! Smarmy? Never! Your contempt for this ‘manual labor’ is both classist and sexist. Before the advent of the spinning wheel and its introduction to Europe hand spinning was a time consuming, essential task that hadn’t changed in over a thousand years. Even before the Common Era an industrious woman worthy ‘to be praised’ was one who took up the distaff, no matter how large her household or her station in life. Art, stained glass, illustrations, poetry, literature and song portrayed women from Eve to the Virgin Mary to Queens with a distaff as a symbol of honor and industry and womanhood. By the early middle ages ‘distaff’ was no longer just a term for a textile tool.
When ‘Distaff Side’ is put into an Amazon search there’s a plethora of results: A book on women in Homer’s Odessey, a cookbook authored by women in the Atlanta Braves organization, among others, and the book ‘Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays’ is reviewed as ‘Shakespeare’s distaff side’. In genealogy the distaff side are the matrilineal ancestors – the women.
So rest your rant and look past your leftover sexist ideas- distaff is a perfectly strong word, and a symbol of women whose labor was essential to their households, family and community.
Kirby Meacham:
August 24th, 2019 at 10:09 pm
Good humor here! Love the political commentary. Just one small correction is needed. The fiber goes into the spindle from the distaff where it becomes thread or yarn, then it gets woven with the loom. You might want to straighten that out. Thanks!