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A washerwoman was a woman who earned money by washing other people's clothes, usually at home or at a river, before washing machines and laundries existed. It was heavy, badly paid work — hours of hot water, hard soap and scrubbing — and it was one of the very few jobs open to poor women who had no education, so the word carries a whole social position with it, near the bottom. That is why it turns up so often in old novels and history books, and why calling a modern woman a washerwoman would be an insult about her class, not a description of her job. Use it about the past. There is no living job with this name today; a person who does this work now would be a laundry worker, and the shop is a laundry or a laundrette. You may also meet "washerman", much rarer, and "laundress", which sounds slightly more genteel for the same work.
洗衣婦（舊時以替人洗衣為業的婦女）
組成washer (one who washes: wash + -er) + -woman (a woman who does this work). The -woman ending goes back through Middle English to Old English wīfmann, itself wīf (woman) + mann (person).
同家族的字
- washerthe same washer — one who washes
- chairwomanthe same -woman ending
- policewomanthe same -woman ending
- womanthe -woman ending is woman itself, worn down
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
washerwomannoun
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A woman who washes people's laundry.
- ‘I wish it would rain,’ continued she; ‘only we are going to have a six-week’s wash to-morrow, and that’s a heavy job for the poor creatures. La! don’t you pity washerwomen in hot weather; it’s the hardest work that’s done.’
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A double drummer, large cicada of Australia, of species Thopha saccata.
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A weedy plant of the Americas (Alternanthera caracasana).
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。