charwoman

English

Alternative forms

• char-woman

Etymology

From char +‎ -woman.

Noun

charwoman (plural charwomen)

1. (chiefly British) A woman employed to do housework, traditionally coming and going on a daily basis and paid weekly wages.
   • 1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter XXXVIII, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, , published 1837, →OCLC:

     The cloth was laid by an occasional charwoman, who officiated in the capacity of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s housekeeper; […]

   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter IX, in Far from the Madding Crowd. , volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., , →OCLC:

     Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.

   • 1919, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Pictures”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 163:

     But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit's except the charwoman wiping over the “lino” in the passage.

Synonyms

• char
• charlady
• Cinderella (disparaging)
• cleaning woman

Translations