| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| husband |
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| SYLLABICATION: | hus·band |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  h z b nd |
| NOUN: | 1. A man joined to a woman in marriage; a male spouse. 2. Chiefly British A manager or steward, as of a household. 3. Archaic A prudent, thrifty manager. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: hus·band·ed, hus·band·ing, hus·bands
1. To use sparingly or economically; conserve: husband one's energy. 2. Archaic To find a husband for. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English huseband, from Old English h sb nda, from Old Norse hsbndi : hs, house + bndi, bandi, householder, present participle of ba, to dwell; see bheu- in Appendix I. | | WORD HISTORY: | The English word husband, even though it is a basic kinship term, is not a native English word. It comes ultimately from the Old Norse word hsbndi, meaning “master of a house,” which was borrowed into Old English as hsbnda. The second element in hsbndi, bndi, means “a man who has land and stock” and comes from the Old Norse verb ba, meaning “to live, dwell, have a household.” The master of the house was usually a spouse as well, of course, and it would seem that the main modern sense of husband arises from this overlap. When the Norsemen settled in Anglo-Saxon England, they would often take Anglo-Saxon women as their wives; it was then natural to refer to the husband using the Norse word for the concept, and to refer to the wife with her Anglo-Saxon (Old English) designation, w f, “woman, wife” (Modern English wife). Interestingly, Old English did have a feminine word related to Old Norse hsbndi that meant “mistress of a house,” namely, hsbonde. Had this word survived into Modern English, it would have sounded identical to husband—surely leading to ambiguities.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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