How to Use handmaiden in a Sentence

handmaiden

noun
  • No politician wants to risk getting tagged as a handmaiden to big banks.
    — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 16 June 2017
  • Pedrad will land the role of Mara, the handmaiden and friend to Jasmine.
    — Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Aug. 2017
  • Why add competition or its handmaiden, guilt, to the hefty mental weight of survival?
    — Soleil Ho, SFChronicle.com, 18 May 2020
  • Art was useful, too, as a handmaiden to the urgent problem of narrative.
    — Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Already convinced the coaches were nothing but handmaidens to the app, the firm piled on new clients heedlessly.
    — Allison Pugh, TIME, 14 Aug. 2024
  • This, of course, begs the question if Catherine really did have a handmaiden who helped her seize power.
    — Rachel Paige, refinery29.com, 16 May 2020
  • This, of course, begs the question if Catherine really did have a handmaiden who helped her seize power.
    — Rachel Paige, refinery29.com, 5 Jan. 2021
  • Here comes Judith accompanied by her handmaiden, with the head of Holofernes in tow.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2021
  • Why did Vitali walk away from acting and devote himself to the thankless role of artistic handmaiden?
    — Ty Burr, BostonGlobe.com, 23 May 2018
  • Kim Staunton is the smartest woman in the room as Olivia’s handmaiden and Sir Toby’s paramour.
    — Lisa Kennedy, The Know, 30 Nov. 2019
  • That premise has served science and its handmaiden, technology, extremely well over the past few centuries.
    — Christof Koch, Scientific American, 19 May 2020
  • Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit.
    — Benjamin Mueller, New York Times, 21 Nov. 2019
  • Bolton is best known for making counterproliferation the handmaiden of war and regime change.
    — James Griffiths, CNN, 23 Mar. 2018
  • My mother went with them and spent the week threading leis, ironing pa‘u, and generally acting as a kind of hula handmaiden.
    — Hanya Yanagihara, Condé Nast Traveler, 12 Jan. 2017
  • But after dinner, Talya, a handmaiden to Queen Alicent, meets with her in the cloak of night.
    — Erica Gonzales, ELLE, 10 Oct. 2022
  • After making the special delivery to the devil's handmaiden, Ben’s fate doesn’t look good.
    — Tamara Fuentes, Seventeen, 29 Oct. 2018
  • Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse would be true.
    — David Rohde, New York Times, 15 Apr. 2016
  • Some of these loan finance projects are an example of the Chinese state almost serving as a handmaiden to its companies.
    — CBS News, 2 Nov. 2022
  • In Episode 1, the viewer first meets Janine, who scoffs when the Aunts explain the handmaidens' new purpose.
    — Julie Kosin, Harper's BAZAAR, 27 Apr. 2017
  • The common foe of all is expansionist Iran and its handmaidens Hamas and Hezbollah.
    — Josef Joffe, The Atlantic, 14 Feb. 2026
  • Kit Harington is a handsome man, or as Daenerys's former handmaiden Doreah would put it, it is known.
    — Eliza Thompson, Cosmopolitan, 24 July 2017
  • His aides and friends and diplomatic partners are handmaidens and babysitters and kindergarten teachers and ventriloquists.
    — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 18 May 2017
  • But this bit of craft wisdom—conflict is king—is the handmaiden of a paranoid anthropology, and a limited way of thinking about action and speech.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 2 May 2022
  • The upper level is faulted for admitting too much light and its inevitable handmaiden shadow; the lower for admitting too little.
    — Anthony Paletta, WSJ, 14 Jan. 2022
  • What would the United States be like if the civil service were to become a mere handmaiden to an unscrupulous chief executive?
    — Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 23 Sep. 2022
  • But at the same time, there seems to be little reckoning with the genre’s deep roots in this very system of inequality—little acknowledgment that the art is the handmaiden of the system.
    — Robert Jackson Wood, The New Republic, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Curators pop up in famous artists’ biographies all the time, usually as handmaidens to the creator’s genius, opening a door to a gallery here or supporting a grant application there.
    — Hilton Als, New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Brush in hand, she is dwarfed by huge canvases within the paintings on which bare-breasted figures are in the process of emerging—a waiflike handmaiden hard at work at the feet of her American Helens of Troy.
    — Naomi Fry, New Yorker, 23 May 2026
  • The Washington Post on Tuesday published a story alleging that Barrett, who does not advertise her membership in the group, was at least, at one time, a handmaiden.
    — Nicholas Rowan, Washington Examiner, 7 Oct. 2020
  • Across the room, facing Helen, her handmaiden and Paris — and a despondent-looking dog — is Cassandra, who could see the future, along with Apollo, who had cursed her so her prophecies would not be believed.
    — Elisabetta Povoledo, New York Times, 11 Apr. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'handmaiden.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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