Word.ws English Dictionary

tallywoman

tallywoman noun: a woman who conducts the tally trade.

Noun

tallywoman (plural tallywomen)

  1. A woman who conducts the tally trade.
  2. (archaic, informal, regional) A woman who cohabits (with someone) outside of marriage.
    • It is used in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and, I dare say, various other counties. A tally-woman is the mistress of a married man, who is said to live tally with her.[1890, F.C. Birkbeck Terry, “Tally-woman”, in Notes and Queries, page 297
  3. (Ireland) A female counting agent.

Forms of tallywoman

pluraltallywomen

Origin of tallywoman

From tally + woman.

Questions about tallywoman

What does tallywoman mean?
Tallywoman means a woman who conducts the tally trade.
What part of speech is tallywoman?
Tallywoman is a noun.
What is the plural of tallywoman?
The plural of tallywoman is tallywomen.

Words near tallywoman in the dictionary

  1. tallywackers
  2. tallywag
  3. tallywags
  4. tallywhacker
  5. tallywhackers
  6. tallywoman
  7. tallywomen
  8. talm bout
  9. talma
  10. Talmadge
  11. Talmadges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tallywoman (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.

Last updated:

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