home economics
Americannoun
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the art and science of home management.
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a college curriculum usually including studies in nutrition, the purchase, preparation, and service of food, interior design, clothing and textiles, child development, family relationships, and household economics.
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of home economics
An Americanism dating back to 1895–1900
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.
And appliances that reduced some labor often raised the bar: more frequent washing, more cleaning, more elaborate meals, as University of Chicago home economics professor Hazel Kyrk described in “Economic Problems of the Family.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
Pupils currently have to learn home economics on rotation, something which has happened with other subjects in the past.
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
For much of the 1900s, family and consumer sciences, more broadly known as home economics, were a staple of educational curricula in most American communities.
From Salon ● Jan. 30, 2026
Collins taught home economics in high school and math in junior high before she transitioned into politics, elected clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1975 and then lieutenant governor in 1979.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Naomi winced with each step back to the home economics cottage.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
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.
