Housekeeping

Podcast 1 · Introduction

Housekeeping

A documentary-style narration: origin, meaning, and feel.

Part of speech

noun

Pronunciation

HOWSS-kee-ping  /ˈhaʊskiːpɪŋ/

Definition

The management and maintenance of a household, including cleaning, organising, and running domestic affairs; the department in a hotel or institution responsible for cleaning and maintenance; (informal) routine administrative tasks or maintenance work in any system or organisation.

Plain meaning

Housekeeping is the work of keeping a house clean and well-managed. In a hotel, the housekeeping department cleans and maintains the rooms. Informally, housekeeping refers to any routine maintenance or administrative tidying up — in a meeting, doing some housekeeping means dealing with routine matters before the main business; in computing, housekeeping refers to background maintenance tasks.

Register

Neutral across literal and figurative contexts. Housekeeping is used in domestic, hotel, business, computing, and administrative contexts. The figurative use is particularly common in professional and business language for routine maintenance tasks that are necessary but not exciting.