laundress
English
Etymology
launderer + -ess
Noun
laundress (plural laundresses)
- Synonym of washerwoman
- c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], part 1, 2nd edition, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, OCLC 932920499; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:
- I tell thee ſhameleſſe girle,
Thou ſhalt be Landreſſe to my waiting maide:
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Translations
laundress — see washerwoman
Verb
laundress (third-person singular simple present laundresses, present participle laundressing, simple past and past participle laundressed)
- (obsolete, historical) To act as a laundress.
- 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 26, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, OCLC 558196156:
- ‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. […] ’
- 1875, Mary Louisa Molesworth, “Too Bad” in Tell Me a Story, London: Macmillan, 5th edition, 1882, p. 169,
- And oh, my dears, real washing is very different work from the dolls’ laundressing—standing round a wash-hand basin placed on a nursery chair, and wasting ever so much beautiful honey-soap in nice clean hot water […]
- 2007, Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows My Name), New York: Norton, Book Three, p. 260,
- Mama got herself free before she had me, and she was laundressing for the British since my early days.
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