Word.ws English Dictionary

housewive

/ˈhaʊswaɪv/

housewive verb: to manage with skill and economy.

Verb

housewive (third-person singular simple present housewives, present participle housewiving, simple past and past participle housewived)

  1. (especially, transitive) To manage with skill and economy.
    • Conferred those moneys on the nuns, which since they have well-housewived.1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)
  2. To act as a housewife

Forms of housewive

third-person singular presenthousewives
present participlehousewiving
past participlehousewived
pasthousewived
alternative formhousewife
alternative formhuswife

Questions about housewive

What does housewive mean?
Housewive means to manage with skill and economy.
What part of speech is housewive?
Housewive is a verb.
How do you pronounce housewive?
Housewive is pronounced /ˈhaʊswaɪv/.
What is the past tense of housewive?
The past tense of housewive is housewived.

Words near housewive in the dictionary

  1. housewifish
  2. housewifization
  3. housewifry
  4. housewindow
  5. housewindows
  6. housewive
  7. housewived
  8. housewively
  9. housewivery
  10. housewives
  11. housewiving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: housewive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “housewive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/housewive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.