housemother
/haʊsˈmʌðə(ɹ)/
"housemother" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“housemother” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The mother of a family; the female head of household, or of any collection of persons living as a family or in common, as in a primitive community.
Corpus desk
Index EN-housemother · housemother · English
housemother · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "H" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | housemother |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /haʊsˈmʌðə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “housemother” in English
Rare enough to double-check
housemother is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /haʊsˈmʌðə(ɹ)/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
housemother doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From house + mother. First use appears c. 1822. See cite below. The correct English form is housemother, spelled H-O-U-S-E-M-O-T-H-E-R.
Definition
- 1The mother of a family; the female head of household, or of any collection of persons living as a family or in common, as in a primitive community.
- 2A woman in charge of a residence for young people to look after them.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how housemother appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
At length, the aged house-mother died, or rather slept away into the other world, without pain or sickness, from absolute decay; leaving her solitary partner to mourn her loss, and with an unfeigned longing to join her in the grave.
Etymology
From house + mother. First use appears c. 1822. See cite below.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.