meido

English

A meido (sense 2) promoting a maid café in Tokyo.

Etymology

From Japanese メイド (meido, “maid, maidservant”), from English maid.

Noun

meido (plural meido or meidos)

1. (chiefly Japanese fiction) A female fictional character who is employed as a maid, typically wearing a stylized French maid outfit.
   • 2006 October 13, Abraham Evangelista, “Re: Crescent Love - dull new anime”, in rec.arts.anime.misc‎^[1] (Usenet):

     I was really struck by how many of the bishoujo cliches it managed to bring up. We already have the older sister, younger sister, childhood friend, and exotic transfer student. We have a genki girl, a ditzy girl, a hime-sama, and a meido.

   • 2008 October 12, Kitty Sensei, “Playing pirate”, in Malaysia Star:

     And then there’s Roberta, who seems like a typical meido (maid) character until she pulls out machine guns from her lacy uniform!

   • 2008, Memedi, "Loyal helper", Malaysia Star, 9 November 2008:

     Although this is a manga about maids, don’t expect to see the submissive and fawning maids of the meido category. The protagonist here is a faithful, skilled and courteous maid from the old English society.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:meido.
2. A waitress at a maid café.
   • 2008 February 9, Captain Nerd [username], “Re: "Alien Jones" - "Boss" coffee ads”, in rec.arts.anime.misc‎^[2] (Usenet):

     Actually, the two times I was there, it was really quite dull in terms of the people wandering around. The most excitement I saw was that one candidate for Prime Minister giving a van-top speech in front of Akihabara station. Oh, and a demonstration of some RC "Tokyo Drift" toy cars out on the street. No dancing in the streets, only a very few meido (some of questionable gender >__< ), and quite a few gaikokujin.

   • 2009, John Graham-Cumming, The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive, O'Reilly Media, published 2009, →ISBN, page 104:

     These meido attract customers by role-playing the part of a maid, complete with French maid-inspired outfits that are long on fantasy elements and typically short on skirt length.

   • 2012 April 1, Dave Tacon, “Dusting off a geek fetish for all things maid in Japan”, in Sydney Morning Herald:

     "I like having conversations with different meidos," he explains, "but Haruki is my favourite because she's friendliest to me."
     […]
     Utena, a meido with pink hair and red plastic horns, recently celebrated her fourth year at Maidolce.

Anagrams

• Modie, demoi, medio-

Japanese

Romanization

meido

1. Rōmaji transcription of めいど
2. Rōmaji transcription of メイド