housewife
Americannoun
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housewives
plural
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Sometimes Offensive. a married woman who manages her own household, especially as her principal occupation.
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British. a sewing box; a small case or box for needles, thread, etc.
verb (used with or without object)
noun
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a woman, typically a married woman, who keeps house, usually without having paid employment
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Also called: hussy. huswife. a small sewing kit issued to soldiers
Sensitive Note
Most people, married or unmarried, find the term housewife perfectly acceptable. But it is sometimes perceived as insulting, perhaps because it implies a lowly status (“She’s just a housewife”) or because it defines an occupation in terms of a woman's relation to a man. Homemaker is a fairly common substitute.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of housewife
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English hus(e)wif; see origin at house, wife
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Hathaway can handle anything, from a despondent housewife to a rifle-toting badass, but I’ve never seen her tasked to do both in a film this brisk.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
"I was supposed to go for a thyroid check-up in January," Vasile, a 56-year-old housewife, told AFP, saying she used the money instead for food and the electricity bill.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
"The loss of the leader is heavier than losing our parents," Hoda, a 35-year-old housewife, told AFP news agency.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
Even before her husband’s death and her takeover as CEO of TPUSA, she was a highly-educated career woman only playing at being the demure housewife for his audiences.
From Salon ● Jun. 12, 2026
Then he went back to totaling an order for a gaunt housewife.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
Tradwife content whitewashes history, but an honest look shows that contempt for housewives was a widespread theme in the past.
From Salon ● Apr. 8, 2026
German defence giant Rheinmetall on Sunday sought to smooth over a row caused by comments from its boss comparing Ukrainian factories producing drones to "housewives" making weapons in their kitchens.
From Barron's ● Mar. 29, 2026
“The Golden Life” will no longer feature Zarin among its cast of housewives, series producer Blink49 Studios announced in a statement on Tuesday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2026
Credited with helping to ignite second-wave feminism in the 1960s, the book claimed that many middle-class, college-educated women were dissatisfied being confined to their roles as housewives and mothers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2025
I had heard that JetBlue had outsourced its entire reservation system to housewives in Utah, and I wanted to check this out.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
