laundress

plural laundresses

1. Synonym of washerwoman.

   I tell thee ſhameleſſe girle, Thou ſhalt be Landreſſe to my waiting maide:

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii

   Synonyms: washerwoman

present singular third person laundresses · participle present laundressing · participle past laundressed · past laundressed

1. historicalobsoleteTo act as a laundress.

   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.

   2 more examples

   ‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. […]’

   1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 26, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC

   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 […]

   1875, Mary Louisa Molesworth, “Too Bad”, in Tell Me a Story, 5th edition, London: Macmillan, published 1882, page 169