I've always liked using the thesaurus because I'm nerdy like that and also because one of my biggest weaknesses in writing is that I tend to use the same words repeatedly, sometimes in sentence after sentence. Even though I'm a trained copyeditor I don't even notice myself doing it sometimes until I go back and read over what I've written. Hence, the need for and love of the thesaurus. When I was using it recently I happened to come across the word "housewife" and its amusing synonyms. According to Webster's, they are:
mistress
lady of the house
housekeeper
home economist
homemaker
family manager
wife and mother
Those sounds pretty accurate to me! A housewife certainly has a lot of significant work to do each day. I used to be a little skeptical of that until I became one. My personal favorite is "lady of the house."
And just picture the scintillating conversation you could have with someone:
..."So, what do you do?"
"I'm the lady of the house. You could also call me the mistress." :-)
