Hussy!!!

Remember Goody Proctor from The Crucible ? I didn't know where it came from. And I imagine most people don't. Goody comes from a contracted form of the old term "Good-Wife,"
a term totally archaic by our standards, but just kind of archaic in the 17th century.

I imagine you can guess what this is leading to.

Think, Good-wife, subtract wife, add "y" ending, what do you get?


Goody.

Think House-Wife, once a term of venerated respect (as it meant someone was the wife of a free landowner in a feudal society), eventually being familiarized in the same manner.

So,

House-Wife.

-Wife

House

+Y

Housey

, Then, accounting for how people said house back in the 17th, 18th centuries, you need to mess up the vowel slightly.

Housey

ou --> U / C_C

Husy

Then, for the sake of spelling conventions,
+s

Hussy!!!

This used to be a neutral or pleasant word for a wife. Many words for women in power or respect suffer a similar phenomenon of pejoration, becoming negative.

Thus, today Hussy means some kind of sexually loose woman, in a bad way maybe.

Thus, in order to avoid this negative connotation, the term "House-wife" is restored to it's former use! Only, it's less prestigious.