• IPA: /ˈhʌz.bənd/

husband (plural husbands)

1. The master of a house; the head of a family; a householder.
2. A tiller of the ground; a husbandman.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: Printed [by Richard Field] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 932900760 ↗, book IV, canto III:

     {...}} a withered tree, through husbands toyle, / Is often seene full freshly to have florisht {{...}

   • the painful husband, ploughing up his ground

   • He is the neatest husband for curious ordering his domestick and field accommodations.

3. A prudent or frugal manager.
4. A man in a marriage or marital relationship, especially in relation to his spouse.

   You should start dating so you can find a suitable husband.

   • The husband and wife are one person in law.

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546 ↗; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], OCLC 2666860 ↗, page 0016 ↗:

     A great bargain also had been […] the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid thirty-seven shillings for the chair.

5. The male of a pair of animals.
6. (UK) A manager of property; one who has the care of another's belongings, owndom, or interests; a steward; an economist.
7. A large cushion with arms meant to support a person in the sitting position.

   While reading her book, Sally leaned back against her husband, wishing it were the human kind.

8. (UK dialectal) A polled tree; a pollard.

• See also Thesaurus:husband

• wife

• French: mari, époux
• German: Ehemann, Mann, Gemahl, Gatte, Ehegatte
• Italian: marito
• Portuguese: marido, esposo
• Russian: муж
• Spanish: marido, esposo

husband (husbands, present participle husbanding; past and past participle husbanded)

1. (transitive) To manage or administer carefully and frugally; use to the best advantage; economise.

   For my means, I'll husband them so well, / They shall go far. — Shakespeare.

2. (transitive) To conserve.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

     ...I found pens, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not, for I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To till; cultivate; farm; nurture.

   • Land so trim and rarely husbanded.

4. (transitive) To provide with a husband.
5. (transitive) To engage or act as a husband to; assume the care of or responsibility for; accept as one's own.

• French: ménager
• Italian: dosare
• Portuguese: economizar, poupar, conservar
• Spanish: ahorrar, manejar con economía

1. Surname