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washerwoman

American  
[wosh-er-woom-uhn, waw-sher-] / ˈwɒʃ ərˌwʊm ən, ˈwɔ ʃər- /

noun

  • washerwomen
    plural
  1. a woman who washes clothes, linens, etc., for hire; laundress.


washerwoman British  
/ ˈwɒʃəˌwʊmən /

noun

  1. a person who washes clothes for a living

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Gender

See -woman.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of washerwoman

First recorded in 1625–35; washer + -woman

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:

June Brown, who has died at the age of 95, won her place in British hearts playing the chain-smoking washerwoman, Dot Cotton in EastEnders.

From BBC Apr. 4, 2022

McCarty worked for 75 years as a washerwoman and donated the majority of her life savings to the university after her death in 1999 at the age of 91.

From Washington Times Oct. 9, 2020

Rigid social and ethnic demarcations begin to bend when the matriarch of a wealthy white family in New Rochelle, N.Y., provides shelter to an African American washerwoman who is scared and alone after giving birth.

From Los Angeles Times Feb. 14, 2019

For Sandy, the pressure to be respectable comes from Aunt Tempy, Aunt Hager’s oldest child, who avoids visiting her washerwoman mother in an effort to preserve the illusion of her middle-class upbringing.

From New York Times Jan. 2, 2018

He sat in the back of the Great Hall, not far from the horses, watching Abel, Rowan, and a mousy brown-haired washerwoman called Squirrel attack slabs of stale brown bread fried in bacon grease.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

Naman Ramachandran, author of Rajinikanth: A Definitive Biography, notes that Rajinikanth's fans range from Wall Street bankers to washerwomen in Tamil Nadu.

From BBC Aug. 14, 2025

Jim Downs: Laundresses, washerwomen, cooks, any number of things.

From Scientific American Nov. 2, 2023

In Atlanta, she spoke of the washerwomen who went on strike in 1881; in New York she spoke of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy.

From Slate Mar. 5, 2020

In a speech in Atlanta in November, Warren said black washerwomen who led a successful strike in the 1880s for higher wages proved “the women stood together.”

From Washington Post Jan. 19, 2020

Though she had been too young to witness the spectacle herself, Cersei had heard the stories growing up from the mouths of washerwomen and guardsmen who had been there.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

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