housewife
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
See also: house-wife
English
Alternative forms
- house-wife (archaic)
- houswife, huswife (both obsolete)
Etymology
From Middle English houswyf, housewif, huswijf, equivalent to house + wife; a doublet of hussy, which it was long-distinguished with and displaced due to gradual negative connotation (see Online Etymology Dictionary entry). Cognate with German Hausweib.
Pronunciation
- Person
- IPA(key): /ˈhaʊs.waɪf/
Audio (US): (file) - (obsolete, dialectal, poetic) IPA(key): /ˈhʌzwaɪf/, /ˈhʌz(w)ɪf/
- Bag
- IPA(key): /ˈhʌzɪf/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
housewife (plural housewives or housewifes) (see notes below about plurals)
- (plural "housewives") A woman whose main employment is homemaking, maintaining the upkeep of her home and tending to household affairs; often, such a woman whose sole [unpaid] employment is homemaking.
- Synonym: (archaic) henhussy
- Hypernym: homemaker
- Coordinate term: househusband
- 2000, Uli Kusch, "Mr. Torture", Helloween, The Dark Ride
- Mr Torture sells pain / To the housewives in Spain / He knows just what they crave / Mr Torture
- (plural "housewives") The wife of a householder; the mistress of a family; the female head of a household.
- (plural "housewifes") A little case or bag for materials used in sewing, and for other articles of female work.
- Synonym: hussy
- 1828, JT Smith, Nollekens and His Times, Century Hutchinson, published 1986, page 246:
- It was a housewife, containing needles, a bodkin, and thread; ‘and, do you know,’ added he, ‘it was the most useful thing she could have given me, for it lasted all the time I was at Rome to mend my clothes with […] .’
- 1852, Tom Taylor, Charles Reade, Masks and Faces, act II:
- Woffington's housewife, made by herself, homely to the eye, but holds everything in the world
- 1997, David L. Phillips, A Soldier's Story, MetroBooks, →ISBN, page 61:
- The "soldier's housewife" was a small sewing kit that was carried to make timely repairs to clothing and equipment.
- (plural "housewives", obsolete) A worthless woman; a hussy.
Derived terms
Translations
female head of household
|
case for materials used in sewing
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Verb
housewife (third-person singular simple present housewifes, present participle housewifing, simple past and past participle housewifed)
- Alternative form of housewive
- 1983 December 10, Jolanta Benal, “The Second Revolution”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 21, page 14:
- Career opportunity […] is the one who never knocks — especially not on the doors of women, who are still hooking, housewifing and hairdressing for their livings.
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English compound terms
- English doublets
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English nouns with irregular plurals
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English verbs
- English heteronyms
- en:Bags
- en:Household
- en:Female
- en:People
- en:Stock characters