Hussy
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A housewife or housekeeper. obsolete
"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!"
- 2 a woman adulterer wordnet
- 3 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."
- 4 A sexually loose woman wordnet
- 5 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 recollect she had very beautiful brown eyes."
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- 6 A case or bag for needles, thread, etc. obsolete
Example
More examples"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!"
Etymology
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.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.