hussy
/ˈhʌsi
/ /ˈhʌzi /noun (plural hussies)
An impudent or immoral girl or woman: that brazen little hussy!...
- Even in this day and age, when unmarried mothers are hardly seen as shameless hussies anymore, there are still girls who suffer incredible loneliness because they daren't bring shame upon their families.
- The challenge is to win the fight to be ordinary - not to be forced into the role of camp court jesters or brazen sapphic hussies.
- Depending on your age, morals and various points of view, she was either the sexiest piece of work around or a brazen hussy or both.
Synonyms
minx, madam, coquette, tease, seductress, Lolita, Jezebel;
trollop, slut, loose woman
informal floozie, tart, puss
British informal scrubber, slapper, slag
North American informal tramp, vamp, hoochie
archaic baggage, hoyden, fizgig, jade, quean, wanton, strumpet
Origin
Late Middle English: contraction of housewife (the original sense); the current sense dates from the mid 17th century.
‘You brazen hussy!’ is now the sort of thing someone might call a female friend as a joke, but until the mid 20th century hussy was a serious term for an immoral woman. The original hussy was far more respectable, though—she was a housewife. Hussy developed in the mid 16th century from housewife (Middle English), which was the word's first meaning. Some hundred years later it became a rude or playful way of addressing a woman, and also a derogatory term implying a lack of morals.