Meaning & use
handy woman
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountableinformal
A woman who is good at doing small repairs and practical jobs around a house or building.
Grammar: Countable: one handy woman, two handy women (irregular plural).
Patterns
- a handy woman
- be a handy woman
My aunt is a handy woman who fixed the leaking tap herself.
They hired a handy woman to repaint the whole apartment before the wedding.
If you're a handy woman, you can save a lot on small repairs.
nouncountableinformal
A woman employed to do small repairs and maintenance jobs, often in a hotel or apartment building.
Grammar: Countable, used like a job title: the handy woman at our hotel.
Patterns
- work as a handy woman
- the handy woman at something
The handy woman at the hotel replaced the broken lock within an hour.
She works as a handy woman for several landlords in the neighborhood.
Word forms
| plural | handy women |
|---|
Common combinations
- a handy woman around the house
- He's lucky to have a handy woman around the house who can fix almost anything.
- hire a handy woman
- We decided to hire a handy woman to put up the shelves.
- be good with tools
- A handy woman is usually good with tools and quick to learn new skills.
- do odd jobs
- She does odd jobs for neighbors, like a handy woman on weekends.
Synonyms and how they differ
- handyman
- The standard, gender-neutral term; it is much more common and can refer to a man or a woman.
- handyperson
- A neutral alternative that avoids saying man or woman, but it is still fairly rare.
- repairer
- Focuses on fixing things but does not suggest general household skills the way 'handy woman' does.
Word family
Commonly confused: handy woman or handywoman?
handy woman vs handywoman
Some people write it as one word, but the two-word form 'handy woman' is clearer and more common.
Practice
Choose the best sentence.
Choose one answer.
'A handy woman' needs the article 'a', and 'herself' is the correct reflexive pronoun for 'she'. Option 3 is wrong because it drops 'a'; option 1 uses 'itself' for a person; option 4 is grammatical but changes the meaning to 'without help', which is not the point being tested.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “handy woman”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.