Houswyf

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic spelling of the woman who keeps and manages a home and family ; a small case holding needles, thread and other sewing supplies
2. An old form for a woman in charge of running a household ; a compact kit used to store needles, thread and mending tools
3. A woman who oversees the running of a home in older English ; a small sewing box containing basic tools for repairing clothes

Etymology: "Houswyf" is a Middle English spelling of "housewife," and the word's oldest sense was far from the modern one. Its Old English ancestor, "hūsewīf," combined "hūs" (house) with "wīf," which then meant simply a woman, married or not. The earliest sense was a woman who managed a household, with no reference to a husband. Speech wore the word down. The unstressed second syllable shrank to "huss-," and "hussy" came to mean the household mistress, then by the 1600s a woman of loose morals, a sense that stuck. Meanwhile "huswife" survived as the name for a small sewing kit holding needles and thread, a use still recognized in some English-speaking regions.