Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A woman hired to do cleaning or similar work, usually in a large building.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A woman hired to do chares or odd work, or to work by the day.
Wiktionary
- n. chiefly UK A woman employed to do housework.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A woman hired for odd work or for single days.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a human female employed to do housework
Etymologies
- char + woman. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“WILLIS: A charwoman is a person who cleans a building, so she is responsible for cleaning up the building.”
“Normally, the chef would call a charwoman to clean up that sort of mess.”
“They had been lifted from a garbage can used by bureaucrats in some Soviet Russian Consulate, pilfered by what old British spy novelists used to call a "charwoman", in Yankee parlance, a janitor.”
The Huffington Post: Richard H. Smith: Could a California Budget Fix Threaten National Security?
“(I say charwoman, meaning a woman who is paid to do work that other servants are hired to do, but will not.) [Illustration]”
“She usually dressed rather in the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising that she should have imagined that she was one; and still less that people should accept her statement and help her to get work.”
“From the theatre, we lost: Daniel, our doorkeeper; two stagehands; one of the dray horses not from plague, of course; Mary, the wig mistress; and Sue, our charwoman.”
“Sexually frustrated Acacius, in Halston's expert hands, is a scream, while Fraser's turn as both Walburga and an Irish charwoman, is a comic gem.”
“A charwoman-actress once captivated Mexican high society in her alter ego as Don Carlos Balmori”
“The party of travellers was stopped short in the customs shed by the sight of a white cockney charwoman on her knees, scrubbing the floor.”
“A plaid shawl borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing broken-heartedly after her wandering boy.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘charwoman’.
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Phrases from British novels, between ...
lust legs and lip..., lawner, clettering, cletter, big business, pointless, feckless, aimless, graceless, something nasty i..., cold comfort, mollock and 61 more...
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Maids
Maids of all stripes.
twait-shad, chambermaid, demoiselle, fille de chambre, housemaid, amah, lady's maid, femme-de-chambre, tire-woman, soubrette, comb-brush, abigail and 80 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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misterspee's Words
prolepsis, cumin, nacreous, lucre, obstreperous, nibble, nubbin, kenosis, frangible, aposiopesis, synecdoche, persiflage and 144 more...
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word set 12
plasmasphere, cockatrice, delimitable, precipitancy, trellising, thermochromism, cadenza, tentaculiferous, fluctiferous, circumambient, loblolly, trailing edge and 142 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Interesting Scrabble words
Interesting words worth @ least 15 points.
smoochy, zareba, hyphal, djellaba, cloque, pyxidium, qindarka, squiffy, howbeit, chthonic, quinta, azimuthal and 262 more...
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Learned words
Words which are highly likely to be found in the work of learned writers.
ailurophile, labyrinthine, lagniappe, colleague, anechoic, reglets, fluctuations, scalar, implicit, constitute, mortification, ambassadors and 629 more...
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miscellanea
antimacassar, snootful, sessile, glagolitic, marrowsky, farrago, keel, calumny, rheum, talisman, tally, awry and 508 more...
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The Basic Kafka
Words gathered while reading The Basic Kafka, a collection of the short fiction, aphorisms, letters, and diary entries of Franz Kafka.
endways, fretwork, dun, manoeuvre, uprush, hale, execrate, ministration, curtaining, conduce, propitiate, greatcoat and 35 more...
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Girls Girls Girls
chantress, hussy, broad, dame, skirt, vixen, tart, figurante, peeler, charwoman
Tweets
Looking for tweets for charwoman.
chained_bear That's okay, sarra, they're both words, right? Dec 24, 2008
sarra Whoops, I appear to have listed both this and charlady! Dec 24, 2008
BrainyBabe See also char. Dec 23, 2008
BrainyBabe She darted about the room like a charwoman in torment, now straightening a cushion, now folding a Special Racing Edition, now hustling a shameful pile of lingerie behind a modest curtain. -- ''Yashima, or, The Gorgeous West'' by R T Sherwood, 1931. Dec 23, 2008