▪ I. housekeeping, n.
(ˈhaʊskiːpɪŋ)
[f. house n.1+ keeping vbl. n.]
1. The maintenance of a household; the management of household affairs: cf. house n.1 18 a, d. Also transf.
| 1550 Crowley Last Trump. 1316 In thine housekeping and thy chere. 1576 Fleming Panopl. Epist. 274 Democritus..being wearie of house keeping. 1640 in Lismore Papers Ser. ii. (1888) IV. 122 It was Reported..that your honnor had giuen ouer houskiping. 1791 Mrs. Radcliffe Rom. Forest iii, At my mother's death my father gave up house⁓keeping. 1856 Kane Arct. Expl. II. xxii. 217 They had learned house-keeping. a 1899 Mod. He has married a scholar like himself, and the censorious ask ‘Who is to do the housekeeping?’ 1966 Listener 29 Sept. 448/1, I do not wish to consider..this..in terms of national housekeeping. 1969 Times 2 June (Fire Protection Suppl.) p. i, One of the most important things in industrial fire protection..is what we call good housekeeping—cleanliness, tidiness, the careful removal of rubbish. |
† 2. a. The keeping of a good (or other) table; hospitality. (Usually with qualifying
adj.)
Cf. house n.1 18 b.
Obs.| 1538 Latimer Serm. & Rem. (Parker Soc.) 411 To maintain..good housekeeping; for to the virtue of hospitality he hath been greatly inclined from his beginning. 1548 Hall Chron., Hen. VI 167 b, He obteined greate love..by his abundant liberalitie, and plentifull house kepynge. 1593 Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, i. i. 191 Thy deeds, thy plainnesse, and thy house-keeping, Hath wonne the greatest fauour of the Commons. 1687 A. Lovell tr. Thevenot's Trav. i. 32 It is never heard in Turkie, that a man hath undone himself by Housekeeping. 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. viii. II. 295 A banquet worthy of the fame which his splendid house⁓keeping has won for him. |
† b. concr. Provisions for household use.
Obs. (or
pseudo-arch.).
| 1826 Scott Woodst. iii, ‘Tell me softly and hastily, what is in the pantry?’ ‘Small housekeeping enough’, said Phoebe. |
3. Used
attrib. of a rented holiday cabin or cottage equipped for light housekeeping; similarly,
housekeeping rooms,
housekeeping suite, etc., furnished accommodation with cooking facilities.
N. Amer.| 1935 M. M. Atwater Murder in Midsummer xx. 190 The house in which she had her tiny suite of ‘housekeeping rooms’. 1968 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 15 Jan. 24/3 (Advt.). In sunny warm Grand Cayman. Furnished for 4, housekeeping ocean front cottages. 1968 W. Muir Belonging xx. 285 We had booked ‘a house-keeping suite’ without knowing what that was and found a sitting-room and bedroom..with a small kitchenette and a shower. 1970 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 26 Sept. 47/3 (Advt.), Housekeeping cabins fully equipped. 1972 Amer. Automobile Assoc. Tour Book 1972–73 (Southwestern states) 214 (Advt.), Kinnikinnik Motor Lodge..Featuring 1 & 2 Rm. Units... Large Housekeeping Cottage. 1972 Prince Edward Island Tourist Accommodations 49 (Advt.), Brudenell Resort... Housekeeping chalets: single {pstlg}16 to {pstlg}20, double {pstlg}20 to {pstlg}28, extra person {pstlg}4. 1973 Kingston (Ont.) Whig-Standard 5 Mar. 28 (Advt.), Single furnished light housekeeping room, refrigerator, stove and sink. Ibid. 8 Mar. 37/9 (Advt.), Near Kingston General Hospital, Queen's on Union Street. All housekeeping facilities. |
4. Short for
housekeeping allowance,
money.
| 1946 G. Kersh Clean, Bright & Slightly Oiled ii. 16 He never give her no housekeeping. 1966 ‘O. Mills’ Enemies of Bride ii. 20 ‘Do you want some money?’ ‘No, it doesn't matter. I haven't got the housekeeping off the Gaffer yet, that's all.’ 1970 J. Porter Rather Common Sort of Crime ii. 25 You'll go throwing your money around but if I ask you for a bit more housekeeping, that's a different story. |
5. Those operations of a computer, organization, etc., which make its work possible but do not directly constitute its performance. Freq.
attrib.| 1956 Jrnl. Assoc. Computing Machinery III. 269 Most of the errors..turned up in the logical or housekeeping operations, building loops, tallying, etc. 1958 Gotlieb & Hume High-Speed Data Processing v. 80 In programming a problem for a data-processing machine many of the instructions are not of an arithmetic nature but fall into a class called organizational or housekeeping instructions. 1962 IBM Systems Jrnl. I. 72 The necessary routines such as housekeeping, timekeeping, utility routines, association of equipment, etc. 1966 Sunday Mail Mag. (Brisbane) 2 Jan. 12/6 The airline industry calls this process ‘housekeeping’. It [sc. inspection of aircraft fuel tanks for traces of fungus, etc.] has to be done with painstaking thoroughness. 1967 Oxford Computer Explained 15 Housekeeping Suites are run on demand, usually twice a week. 1970 A. Chandor et al. Dict. Computers 182 Housekeeping functions include the setting of entry conditions, clearing areas of store if the program expects these to be set to some initial condition,..performing standard input/output routines. 1971 Sci. Amer. June 66/1 The computer provides status information on the equipment and performs many routine ‘housekeeping’ chores, such as adjusting currents in the spectrometer magnets and logging beam currents and other quantities of interest. 1971 Nature 27 Aug. 662/3 Mechanized methods of library housekeeping are also considered. |
6. attrib. and
Comb., as
housekeeping book,
housekeeping goods,
housekeeping keys;
housekeeping allowance,
money, a sum of money regularly set aside for housekeeping expenses.
| 1914 A. Bennett Price of Love xvi. 309 She had received no *housekeeping allowance for more than a week. 1965 in P. Jennings Living Village (1968) 123 Housekeeping allowance {pstlg}7. |
| 1849 Dickens Dav. Copp. (1850) i. 7, I kept my *housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night. 1930 A. Bennett Imperial Palace xxx. 200 The figures of the housekeeping-books had..startled her. |
| 1899 Daily News 26 June 10/6 There is a satisfactory trade doing in damasks, and *housekeeping goods. 1900 Ibid. 17 Sept. 2/7 Housekeeping goods and damasks. |
| 1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. (1853) vi. 48 The *housekeeping keys, Miss. |
| 1885 C. M. Yonge Two Sides of Shield I. i. 12 She gave him money—not father's *housekeeping money, but what she got for herself by writing. 1962 E. O'Brien Lonely Girl ix. 107 My father forgot about housekeeping money when he drank. 1966 L. Southworth Felon in Disguise vi. 86 Her husband had provided her with sufficient housekeeping money for her immediate needs. |
▪ II. ˈhousekeeping, a. [f. house n.1 + keeping, pr. pple. of keep v.] That ‘keeps house’.
| 1552 Huloet, House kepynge, larem fovens. 1802–12 Bentham Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) V. 16 A parcel of..housekeeping tradesmen. 1892 Daily News 26 Feb. 5/7 [The price] that housekeeping consumers pay for their coal. |