goodwife - meaning and definition. What is goodwife
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What (who) is goodwife - definition

ARCHAIC ENGLISH FORM OF ADDRESS

Goodwife         
·noun The mistress of a house.
goodwife         
n.
1.
Goodwoman, goody, gammer.
2.
Wife, housewife, mistress of the house.
goodwife         
¦ noun (plural goodwives) archaic, chiefly Scottish the female head of a household.

Wikipedia

Goodwife

Goodwife (Scots: Guidwife), usually abbreviated Goody, was a polite form of address for women, formerly used where "Mrs.", "Miss" and "Ms." would be used today. Its male counterpart is Goodman. However, a woman addressed by this title was of a lesser social rank than a woman addressed as Mistress.

"Goodwife" and "Goody" were used in England, Scotland, and Colonial America, with the earliest known use circa 1325. By the mid-18th century they had become archaic outside Scotland, and they are perhaps best known today as the forms of address used in period literature, like Arthur Miller's historical fiction The Crucible.

The title also appears in the expression "Goody Two-Shoes", which is sometimes credited to the 1765 children's book The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, though it was first used at least a century earlier.