Housewives

How to spell housewives

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce housewives

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does housewives mean?

1. nounMore than one woman who manages a household, typically without separate paid employment.

Housewives in a sentence

• The survey questioned several housewives about their weekly grocery budgets.

• Many housewives in the neighbourhood organised the school fundraiser together.

Where does housewives come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of housewife, a compound that goes back to Old English and the everyday Germanic vocabulary of home and family. It joins hus, meaning 'house' or 'dwelling', to wif, which in early English meant simply 'woman' before it narrowed to mean 'married woman'; the same wif survives in 'midwife' and in the word 'woman' itself, which began as wifman, literally 'woman-person'. The compound described the woman who managed a household, and it was recorded in Middle English as huswif. That contracted huswif spelling is why the related word 'hussy' exists, since it drifted away in sense, and it also gave 'hussif' as an old name for a sewing kit. The plural keeps the regular English habit of turning a final f sound into a v before adding -s, so housewife becomes housewives in the same way that wife becomes wives and knife becomes knives.

How the word is built

• house (dwelling)
• wife (woman, married woman)
• -s (plural, with the f changing to v)