distaff: [OE] The compound noun distaff ‘rod for holding flax, wool, etc in spinning’ was a late Old English formation from *dis ‘bunch of flax’ (a word which survives in bedizen [17], a derivative of the obsolete dizen, which originally meant ‘put flax on to a rod’ and hence ‘dress up in finery’) and staff. The now fairly archaic use of phrases such as distaff side to refer to ‘women’ comes from the traditional pigeonholing of spinning as a woman’s job. => bedizen[distaff etymology, distaff origin, 英语词源]