housekeeper

noun

1. 1

   Someone (traditionally a woman) employed to look after the home, typically by managing domestic servants or superintending household management; also someone with equivalent duties in a hotel, institution etc.

   She was their third housekeeper, but after a month or so she also gave up.

   The housekeeper, a very decorative brunette of thirty-five with a pseudo-English accent, greeted him with a mixture of grateful effusion and condescending patronage.

   When management of the toney Copley Plaza Hotel ordered housekeepers recently to put down their mops and hand wash the floors, a furor arose among the hotel cleaning staff. Local union representatives and others concerned with issues affecting women workers also rallied in anger to protest the directive, which in essence forced housekeepers to scrub on their hands and knees.

2. 2

   Someone who manages the running of a home, traditionally the female head of the household.

3. 3

   archaicSomeone who keeps to their house; someone who rarely ventures away from home; an unadventurous person, a homebody.

   I do assure you he is no house-keeper. I have seen him in desperate conflict with savage men, and even with His Majesty's redcoats.

4. 4

   archaicSomeone who owns a house as a place of residence; a householder.

   He was often heard to express his fears of coming upon the parish; and to bless God, that, on account of his having been so long a housekeeper, he was intitled to that provision.

Forms

plural

housekeepers