- This page is about unmarried women; for the television show, see The Bachelorette.
Bachelorette is a term for an unmarried woman. Primarily an American English expression derived from the word bachelor, it is a very informal term used only in certain situations or expressions.
In some legal systems a woman who has never married is a spinster, while an unmarried woman who is divorced is a divorcee , and a woman whose husband has died is a widow.
All three of these terms have carried negative cultural connotations at one time or another. Spinster, while very rarely used anymore, often implied that the woman was older than the age when most women traditionally marry and that she would probably never marry. Failing to marry was often looked down upon in many cultures. While divorce is not as much a social stigma as it once was, it indicates that a woman's previous marriage was a failure or mistake, whether her fault or not. The term widow is usually associated with an older woman, although a woman at any age, whose spouse has died, is a widow. Divorcee and widow are also indicative that the woman no longer has her virginity. In some cultures, men would/will not marry a woman who was not a virgin.
The more popularly used legal status of a person (male or female) who has never been married is "single" or "never married".
