woman servant

plural woman servants · plural women servants

1. alternativeAlternative form of womanservant.

   It was no longer acceptable for employers to beat servants, but some pushed woman servants around or boxed their ears or scolded them humiliatingly, calling them “silly girl,” “lazybones,” or “blockhead.”

   2002, Marilyn French, “Industrialization”, in From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women, volumes 3 (Infernos and Paradises, the Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century), The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, published 2008, →ISBN, page 68

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   […] they learned that all the domeſtics had appeared; and the women ſervants, began to be very eloquent in praiſe of D’Alonville, to whom they declared the preſervation of the family had been entirely owing; […]

   1794, Charlotte Smith, chapter IV, in The Banished Man. […], volume I, London: […] T[homas] Cadell, Jun. and W[illiam] Davies, (successors to Mr. [Thomas] Cadell) […], →OCLC, pages 91–92

   But two cheerful women servants appeared from what was presumably the kitchen direction, wheeling a curious wicker erection, which his small guide informed him was called Aunt Clatter—manifestly deservedly—and which bore on its shelves the substance of the meal.

   1916, H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Book I, Chapter 1, § 9