From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishhousewifehouse‧wife /ˈhaʊswaɪf/ ●●● W3 noun (plural housewives /-waɪvz/) [countable] BOHOMEa married woman who works at home doing the cooking, cleaning etc, but does not have a job outside the house SYN homemaker, → house husband
Examples from the Corpus
housewife• Is she to give up being a housewife, put the children in a day-care centre and take paid work?• But the addition of paid work to the housewife's activities does not mean that she is no longer a housewife.• She didn't want to take him back, she hated the idea, but she was a middle-aged housewife.• But are housewives happy with their lot?• And more than half the women interviewed hate the label housewife because it sounds so patronising.• She was an Ohio housewife with three kids when she got the idea to write a funny column for the local newspaper.• A warehouse foreman's wife says: I mind writing housewife on a form. 