Word.ws English Dictionary

hussy

/ˈhʌzi/

hussy noun: a sexually immoral woman.

Noun

hussy (plural hussies)

  1. (derogatory, informal) A sexually immoral woman.
    • She called him ‘pig’ in bastard Arabic, and he called her ‘hussy’ in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in the face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the hands of her Queen.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  2. (derogatory, informal) A cheeky or disrespectful girl; a woman showing inappropriate or improper behavior.
    • Molly the dairymaid came a little way from the rickyard, and said she would pluck the pigeon that very night after work. She was always ready to do anything for us boys; and we could never quite make out why they scolded her so for an idle hussy indoors. It seemed so unjust. Looking back, I...1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC
    • But the girl didn’t like to, till her stepmother said: “Lift it up this instant, you hussy! Girls must keep their promises!”1890, Joseph Jacobs, “The Well of the World’s End”, in English Fairy Tales, page 217
    Synonyms:
    minx
  3. (obsolete) A housewife or housekeeper.
    • WIRTHIN. Well, I should think so! They just dote on that hussy—can't seem to get enough of her. Gretchen tells me so herself. And the care she takes of them!1892, Mark Twain, Meisterschaft: In Three Acts, act III, scene I, page 199
    Synonyms:
    housewife
  4. (obsolete) A case or bag for needles, thread, etc.

hussy meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

hussy in Tamil

நாணமிலி, துடுக்குக்காரி

hussy in Urdu

چھوکری

hussy in Malayalam

coquette, minx, tease
കൊള്ളരുതാത്തവൾ, മര്യാദകെട്ട സ്ത്രീ, അവിനീതസ്ത്രീ, വികൃതിപ്പെണ്ണ്, ഇളക്കക്കാരി, വിലാസിനി

Synonyms of hussy

Forms of hussy

pluralhussies
alternative form (obsolete)huzzy

Origin of hussy

From earlier hussive, hussif, the regular evolution of Middle English houswyf (“housewife”), equivalent to house + wife. Modern housewife is a restoration of the compound (and thus is a doublet), after its component parts had become unrecognisable through regular phonetic change, as well as gradual negative senses and historical factors. The traditional pronunciation of the word is /ˈhʌzi/; the pronunciation with /s/ is a spelling pronunciation.

Words formed from hussy

Words that rhyme with hussy

Questions about hussy

What does hussy mean?
Hussy means a sexually immoral woman.
What is hussy in Tamil?
Hussy in Tamil is நாணமிலி, துடுக்குக்காரி. See Hussy meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hussy?
Hussy is a noun.
How do you pronounce hussy?
Hussy is pronounced /ˈhʌzi/.
What is the plural of hussy?
The plural of hussy is hussies.

Words near hussy in the dictionary

  1. Hussons
  2. husstuss
  3. husstusses
  4. husstussie
  5. husstussies
  6. hussy
  7. hussy up
  8. hussydom
  9. hussying up
  10. hussyness
  11. Hust

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hussy (page history and authors); hussy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hussy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hussy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-US-hussy.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hussy.wav.

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