HOUSEWIFE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Housewife

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/hˈaʊswˌaɪf/ Listen

noun

Housewife n.

The wife of a householder; the mistress of a family; the female head of a household. "He a good husband, a good housewife she."

A little case or bag for materials used in sewing, and for other articles of female work; called also hussy. (Written also huswife)

A hussy. (R.) (Usually written huswife)

Sailor's housewife, a ditty-bag.

Huswife n. (Written also housewife)

A female housekeeper; a woman who manages domestic affairs; a thirfty woman. "The bounteous huswife Nature." "The huswife is she that do labor doth fall."

A worthless woman; a hussy. (Obs.)

A case for sewing materials. See Housewife.

verb

Housewive, Housewife v. t. To manage with skill and economy, as a housewife or other female manager; to economize. "Conferred those moneys on the nuns, which since they have well housewived."

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Etymology of 'Housewife'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books

... how his grandmother, in '61, had put a Bible into one pocket and a housewife into another, and had sent him off to war. Had the fiber of our women weakened since then? But he knew it had not. All day, in the new plant, women were working with high-explosives quite calmly. And there were Audrey and the ...

— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in the Trent Valley, so the travellers would start together, and Lucilla would be dropped on the way. In the cedar parlour, Owen's black knapsack lay open on the floor, and Lucilla was doing the last office in her power for him, and that a sad one, furnishing the Russia-leather housewife with the needles, silk, thread, and worsted for his own mendings when he should be beyond the reach of the ...

— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... laughed with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room—for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife—was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to take the next morning to the old sick ...

— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good housewife and house-mother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be added thereto if a State is to be not only free ...

— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... Mac Dougal! Ye canna forget ye are wee mither and it's hard for ye to be only woman richt noo. I know the kind of wife ye hae in mind for me. The patient wife, the housewife, the meek wife wi' only her een for back-and-ben, for kitchen and ...

— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

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