noun
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a shameless or promiscuous woman
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dialect a folder for needles, thread, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of hussy
1520–30; earlier hussive housewife
Explanation
A hussy is a woman or girl who's disrespectful or immoral. Your old fashioned grandmother might call your brother's live-in girlfriend a hussy. The noun hussy is an insulting and somewhat antique way to refer to a woman whose actions don't line up with traditional ideas of being respectable. A sexually bold women is most likely to be called a hussy, especially if she's seen as "stealing" another woman's partner. Originally, hussy was a shortening of the Middle English husewif, "housewife." Through the 1500's, hussy came to mean "any woman or girl," and by the 1650's it meant "an improper woman or girl."
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:
“Hey, miss Honey Bey. It’s Dolly P. You know that hussy with the good hair you sang about?” she says on the track.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2024
In the interlude "Dolly P," Parton references "Jolene" with, "You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about?/ Reminded me of someone I knew back when."
From Salon ● Mar. 29, 2024
At 50 minutes, I was certain that a heart attack was imminent, but death was preferable to losing to that hussy.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 1, 2017
But when the Great Lover married his hussy and began uxoriously washing diapers and doing kitchen chores to please her, his prestige began to wane.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Use your power,” she said, “and make the hussy fall madly in love with the vilest and most despicable creature there is in the whole world.”
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
Rowlandson looked around and saw that hussies and thieves were thriving not just on the streets but in elegant salons and prosperous businesses as well.
From New York Times ● May 15, 2011
And to-day I've had more to do than to go fetching and carrying, and never a soul to speak to but they two hussies and the lad, since Benacre went on the land.
From Sophia A Romance by Stanley John Weyman
Here I be, lass; and it will go hard if the hussies can see the black man and old Giles in one place.
From Giles Corey, Yeoman A Play by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failed me.
From The Teeth of the Tiger by Maurice Leblanc
One trick’s cured;That lust of giving; Isentrude and Guta,The hussies, came here begging but yestreen,Vowed they were starving.
From The Saint's Tragedy by Charles Kingsley
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.
