Image source: Merlina McGovern
Fowler’s Fancies: Housewife or Hussy
Since my job is to work with words, I’ve decided to write a series exploring the terms and phrases that I stumble across in my handy Fowler’s Modern English Usage. I somehow found in my possession the second edition of this august tome revised by Sir Ernest Gowers. The esteemed Sir Gowers published this edition in 1965 (and then died only a year later after having worked on the revision for nine years). The version I have was reprinted in 1985.
Each week, I will be opening up a page at random and selecting a term to explore.
*Rubs hands eagerly together in anticipation*
I can’t wait to see what “modern” usage I’ll stumble upon each week.
This week, the term is:
Housewife
Well, that was a great example to land on in terms of learning how “modern” this usage book is. The entry is mostly about the pronunciation of the term. I had no idea that the term “housewife” had two different pronunciations. The first pronunciation is one that that you’re probably quite familiar with, ‘hau̇s-wīf. (If, like me, you have no idea what those strange symbols are supposed to sound like, you can click on the link to listen to the automated pronunciation sound, or you can read through Merriam-Webster’s very detailed pronunciation PDF).
Merriam-Webster lists a secondary pronunciation as ‘hus-ǝf as does Fowler’s. Fowler notes that the secondary pronunciation has fallen out of favor when used to mean the human who dwells in a house (though not so much for the secondary definition of housewife, which is apparently a small container for household items, like thread and sewing tools, according to Merriam-Webster — who knew?).
Why has that secondary pronunciation fallen out of favor? Well, it sounds quite close to the pronunciation for the term, hussy. Did you know that, until the 1500s, the terms “hussy” and “housewife” were used interchangeably? Merriam-Webster notes that the first time that the definition of hussy began to bifurcate from housewife was when it was used in the sense of a “brazen and lewd woman” in 1505.[1] And, according to Fowler, this secondary meaning of ‘hus-ǝf led to the need for a distinction between the two: “in the 16th c., when housewife and hussy were still realized to be the same word, a distinction between the two was felt to be the reputable matron’s due.”[2] Indeed!
In my brief investigation of that first pejorative use of hussy, I could not find its actual use in the negative sense in any piece of literature. The great blog, Grammarphobia, has a detailed article on the history of the term hussy, but it only goes back to 1546 for a negative use of the word. I’m not sure where Merriam-Webster found that earlier instance, but regardless, Fowler thought it paramount to warn users away from using the hussy pronunciation when referring to the more respectable housewife.
I also wanted to see what Google Ngrams would show in terms of the usage of both housewife and hussy in literature over the years. I started with the year 1500, which is the earliest year you can type into the tool, and ended with 2019, which is the latest year you could use. In this simple search, there doesn’t appear to be a use of either term until 1544 for housewife and then not until 1591 for hussy. Of course, the search is case sensitive, and I’m also not searching for alternative spellings (for example, Merriam-Webster has the Middle English spelling for housewife as huswif). What is interesting from the Ngram is how usage of housewife skyrockets in the late 1940s and then starts to come back down. And just as interesting to me, usage of hussy starts to grow after the year 2000, make of that what you will.
Image source: http://books.google.com/ngrams
As for me. I’m a married woman who may or may not be in charge of my household (and who may or may not be respectable), so housewife may or may not apply to me. I do know that randomly picking words and phrases from Fowler’s Modern English Usage is going to be fun, and I hope you enjoy taking this trip through word usage and history with me.
[1] “Hussy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hussy. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.
[2] “Housewife.” Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1985.
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