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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
housewife
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
Desperate Housewives
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
old
▪ Mrs Susan Smith, 25 years old, housewife.
▪ One was a 68-year-#old lawyer, the other a 73-year-old housewife.
■ NOUN
role
▪ For this reason an assessment was made for all the forty women of their levels of identification with the housewife role.
▪ A second possibility is that social ranking of wife or housewife roles varies with different socio-economic contexts.
▪ The performance of the housewife role in adulthood is prefaced by a long period of apprenticeship.
▪ There are also indications from other sources that women's basic allegiance to the housewife role is not class-dependent.
▪ This would be evidence against the present finding that identification with the housewife role is not differentiated by class.
▪ This suggests that the personal identification of women with the housewife role weights the balance in favour of a psychological involvement in housework.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an actor turned politician/a housewife turned author etc
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A warehouse foreman's wife says: I mind writing housewife on a form.
▪ And more than half the women interviewed hate the label housewife because it sounds so patronising.
▪ But are housewives happy with their lot?
▪ But the addition of paid work to the housewife's activities does not mean that she is no longer a housewife.
▪ Is she to give up being a housewife, put the children in a day-care centre and take paid work?
▪ She didn't want to take him back, she hated the idea, but she was a middle-aged housewife.
▪ She was an Ohio housewife with three kids when she got the idea to write a funny column for the local newspaper.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
housewife

Huswife \Hus"wife\, n. [OE. huswif; hus house + wif wife. Cf. Hussy a housewife, Housewife.] [Written also housewife.]

  1. A female housekeeper; a woman who manages domestic affairs; a thirfty woman. ``The bounteous huswife Nature.''
    --Shak.

    The huswife is she that do labor doth fall.
    --Tusser.

  2. A worthless woman; a hussy. [Obs.]
    --Shak.

  3. [See Hussy a bag.] A case for sewing materials. See Housewife.
    --Cowper.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
housewife

early 13c., husewif, "woman, usually married, in charge of a family or household" (compare husebonde; see husband), from huse "house" (see house (n.)) + wif "woman" (see wife). Also see hussy. Related: Housewifely.

Wiktionary
housewife

n. 1 A woman, often unemployed, who spends most of her time maintaining the upkeep of her home and tending to household affairs. 2 The wife of a householder; the mistress of a family; the female head of a household. 3 A little case or bag for materials used in sewing, and for other articles of female work; – called also (term: hussy). vb. (alternative form of housewive English)

WordNet
housewife
  1. n. a wife who who manages a household while her husband earns the family income [syn: homemaker, lady of the house, woman of the house]

  2. [also: housewives (pl)]

Wikipedia
Housewife

A housewife is a woman whose occupation is running or managing her family's home—caring for her children; buying, preparing and storing food for the family; buying goods the family needs in everyday life, cleaning and maintaining the home, making clothes for the family, etc.—and who is not employed outside the home. A housewife may also be called a stay-at-home mother (stay-at-home mom) and a male homemaker may also be called a stay-at-home father ( stay-at-home dad) or househusband (if married). Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. The British Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1901) defined a housewife as: "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager; a pocket sewing kit".

Housewife (film)

Housewife is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alfred E. Green. The screenplay by Manuel Seff and Lillie Hayward is based on a story by Hayward and Robert Lord.

Housewife (The Cribs song)

"Housewife" arrived in August 2010 as a one-off release, and their fourth single overall, by the four-piece incarnation of British indie rock band The Cribs. On 9 August 2010, BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe announced during his show that he would play a brand new song that night, something previously hinted at on the official band website several days previously. The release took fans and critics by surprise due to the secretive nature of the release.

Usage examples of "housewife".

The farmer, housewife, banker, merchant and laborer seem to be equally prone to the affliction and all who suffer have a great number of days rendered uncomfortable and unhappy by the presence of this most unpleasant affection.

But even the studios will sweeten that boosted peak by rewitnessing it through a neutered cat, a Catholic priest, a housewife overprescribed with estrogen.

Jess wiped her hands on her pinny, the apron she, and most housewives, habitually wore during the day, before answering the knock at the door.

Within two or three successive seconds, millions of people in widely separated areas-factory and office workers, farmers, housewives, shoppers, salesclerks, restaurant operators, printers, service station attendants, stock-brokers, hoteliers, hairdressers, movie projectionists and patrons, streetcar motormen, TV station staffs and viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, pinball players .

The Speedway Corporation keeps a roster of mostly local neighborhood people -- usually housewives and college students -- who want part-time holiday work.

For the paper patterns from which she snipped out regular rectangles and hexagons of cloth, the thrifty housewife often used up old love letters.

The streets about the Fireflower Market were thronged with porters, slaves, housewives, and their maids.

Mistress Page has received the letter from Falstaff, and as a respectable housewife ungiven to intrigue, she is thoroughly angered.

He approached, and saw a leg of mutton at the bottom, and the unthrifty housewife throwing away the liquor in which it had been boiled.

April 25, when the likelihood of frost had diminished, he had to plant his sugar beets the way a housewife plants radishes: he sowed the seed heavily along the whole length of his rows, using about twenty-four times as many seeds as he really needed.

I think of the absurd crashes of neurasthenic housewives returning from their VD clinics, hitting parked cars in suburban high streets.

Desperate housewives have peeled and slit garlic cloves to release the odour, then put them in drawers, under cabinets and along baseboards all over the kitchen with some success as long as the odour lasts - about two weeks.

The canons had distributed various joints of meat, chickens, capons, conies, eggs, milk, honey, flour, almonds, and other raw materials among the housewives, who had added what they could, and a great fragrance of roasting, baking and boiling hung over the town during the afternoon.

I will be as good a housewife and dairywoman, stir about as briskly, and sing as merrily, as Peggy Curling.

Patches of snow gleamed on the misty heights of Helvellyn, and the autumn winds howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings, when all the shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help the housewife at her spinning-wheel.