Word.ws English Dictionary

housewright

housewright noun: a person who builds and repairs houses, especially wooden houses. Particularly, in eighteenth-century colonial America, a craftsman who cut timber (like a lumberjack) in the quantity required for the construction of a house, then sawed it into planks, and finally jointed and assembled them (like a carpenter).

Noun

housewright (plural housewrights)

  1. A person who builds and repairs houses, especially wooden houses. Particularly, in eighteenth-century colonial America, a craftsman who cut timber (like a lumberjack) in the quantity required for the construction of a house, then sawed it into planks, and finally jointed and assembled them (like a carpenter).
    • The north and west corners are indeed sometimes penetrated by the rain and require a little attention from the housewright to remedy the evil.1828, Charles Caldwell, A discourse on the genius and character of the Rev. Horace Holley, LL. D.: late president of Transylvania University, Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, pages 208–209
    • The names of the colonial craftsmen had changed. The joiner and the turner and the housewright had become the cabinet-maker, the chair-maker, and the carpenter.1902, Virginia Robie, Colonial furniture, in The House Beautiful (An Illustrated Magazine of Household Art), October 1902 (vol. 12, number 5), Herbert S. Stone, page 270

Proper noun capitalized: Housewright

Housewright (plural Housewrights)

  1. A surname.

Forms of housewright

Noun
pluralhousewrights
Proper noun
pluralHousewrights

Origin of housewright

From house + wright (“builder”).

Questions about housewright

What does housewright mean?
Housewright means a person who builds and repairs houses, especially wooden houses. Particularly, in eighteenth-century colonial America, a craftsman who cut timber (like a lumberjack) in the quantity required for the construction of a house, then sawed it into planks, and finally jointed and assembled them (like a carpenter).
What part of speech is housewright?
Housewright can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of housewright?
The plural of housewright is housewrights.

Words near housewright in the dictionary

  1. Houseworths
  2. housewrap
  3. housewraps
  4. housewrecker
  5. housewreckers
  6. housewright
  7. housewrights
  8. housey
  9. housey-housey
  10. Housh
  11. Houshes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: housewright (page history and authors); Housewright (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: “housewright.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/housewright. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.