Dictionary

housewright en · NOUN

Etymology

From house + wright (“builder”).

Meanings

1. A person who builds and repairs houses, especially wooden houses. Particularly, in eighteenth-century colonial America, a craftsman who cut timber (like a lumberjack) in the quantity required for the construction of a house, then sawed it into planks, and finally jointed and assembled them (like a carpenter).
   • The north and west corners are indeed sometimes penetrated by the rain and require a little attention from the housewright to remedy the evil. 1828, Charles Caldwell, A discourse on the genius and character of the Rev. Horace Holley, LL. D.: late president of Transylvania University, Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, pages 208–209:
   • John Johnson resided in Woburn, Mass., and was by occupation a housewright or carpenter and owned a saw-mill in Woburn. 1914, Alfred Johnson, History and genealogy of one line of descent from Captain Edward Johnson: together with his English ancestry, 1500-1914, Stanhope Press (F.H. Gilson Company), page 63
   • The names of the colonial craftsmen had changed. The joiner and the turner and the housewright had become the cabinet-maker, the chair-maker, and the carpenter. 1902, Virginia Robie, Colonial furniture, in The House Beautiful (An Illustrated Magazine of Household Art), October 1902 (vol. 12, number 5), Herbert S. Stone, page 270

Forms

Relateds

wright · carpenter