POSSLQ

c. 1981, Charles Osgood
You live with me, and I with you / And you will be my POSSLQ / I’ll be your friend and so much more / That’s what a POSSLQ is for.

(US Census) Abbreviation of person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.


curtain

Inherited from Middle English curtine, from Old French cortine, from Late Latin cōrtīna (“curtain”), a calque from Ancient Greek.

The uninterrupted stream of fluid that falls onto a moving substrate in the process of curtain coating.


flat

en-adj

flat (comparative flatter, superlative flattest)

flatter (comparative)
flattest (superlative)

bumpy

antonym(s) of “having no variations in altitude”

→ Portuguese: flat

From Middle English flat, a borrowing from Old Norse flatr (compare Norwegian and Swedish flat, Danish flad), from Proto-Germanic *flataz, from Proto-Indo-European *pleth₂- (“flat”); akin to Saterland Frisian flot (“smooth”), German Flöz (“a geological layer”), Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús), Latvian plats, Sanskrit प्रथस् (prathas, “extension”). Doublet of plat and pleyt.
The noun is from Middle English flat (“level piece of ground, flat edge of a weapon”), from the adjective.
The algebraic sense was coined by Serre in a 1956 paper, originally as French plat.

inh

The author added a chapter to flesh out the book's flatter characters.

(figurative) Lacking liveliness or action; depressed; uninteresting; dull and boring.

(authorship, figuratively, especially of a character) Lacking in depth, substance, or believability; underdeveloped; one-dimensional.

(homological algebra, of a module) Such that the tensor product preserves exact sequences. See Flat module on Wikipedia.Wikipedia.


flat

(geometry) A subset of n-dimensional space that is congruent to a Euclidean space of lower dimension.

This same publisher notes pricing is a crucial factor in the mass market field of $1, $1.95 and $2.95 "flats."

1970, The Publishers Weekly, volume 197, page 85:

(publishing) A flat, glossy children's book with few pages.

"When sampling the aperture of a telescope, using auto-collimating flats (ACFs) is more economical"

2013 April 1, Spechler et al., “Advanced Dispersed Fringe Sensing Algorithm for Coarse Phasing Segmented Mirror Telescopes”, in NASA Tech Briefs, retrieved 2021-12-27:


housewife

en-noun

housewife (plural housewives or housewifes)

From Middle English houswyf, housewif, huswijf, equivalent to house + wife; a doublet of hussy, which it was long-distinguished with and displaced due to gradual negative connotation (see Online Etymology Dictionary entry). Cognate with German Hausweib.

Coordinate term: househusband

2000, Uli Kusch, "Mr. Torture", Helloween, The Dark Ride
Mr Torture sells pain / To the housewives in Spain / He knows just what they crave / Mr Torture

(plural "housewives") A woman whose main employment is homemaking, maintaining the upkeep of her home and tending to household affairs; often, such a woman whose sole [unpaid] employment is homemaking.


roommate

→ Japanese: ルームメイト (rūmumeito)

→ Japanese: ルームメート (rūmumēto)

→ Korean: 룸메이트 (rummeiteu)

I live with Marsha. We’re roommates.
Audio (US): (file)

2016, “Learning English (public domain)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), archived from the original on 2017-09-18

(US, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Canada) A person sharing the same home albeit not the same room (but generally not a family member or spouse).


flatmate

huisgenoot

a person with whom one shares a rental property

Yet when both Regine and her flatmate are at home they tend to spend their time in their rooms, although Regine (and probably the flatmate too) tends to spend more time in the communal areas of the flat when the other is not at home.

2002, Elaine Lally, At Home with Computers, page 149:

“So, it would probably [be] best if we could find another flatmate and go for a flat of five, and if old Chip does pull out, at least we can then drop down to a flat of four. What do you reckon?”

2007, C. N. Barton, The Cambridge Diaries: A Tale of Friendship, Love and Economics, page 121:

Kamal moved Fathi′s things into his own room, and the two became flatmates.
The apartment in which Kamal lived was spacious, with several large rooms and various flatmates.

2011, Ghada Osman, A Journey in Islamic Thought: The Life of Fathi Osman, page 63:

It had been weeks since all the flatmates had sat down together for a meal. Communication was breaking down. Written notes had begun to appear all over the house; please don′t touch this food, I bought it especially for Hermione[…].

1993, Beryl Fletcher, The Iron Mouth, page 190:

One night, one of the flatmates (the one who owned the house) was ranting and raving all night about her girlfriend.

2003, Jen Birch, Congratulations! It′s Asperger Syndrome, page 51:

The position may have been different when your client was living in the house with the flatmates.

2007, CCH New Zealand, Top 100 Questions and Answers on Taxing Land Transactions, page 97:

(UK, Ireland, New Zealand) A person with whom one shares any rental dwelling, not necessarily a flat.


household

From Middle English houshold, equivalent to house + hold. Cognate with Scots houshald, housald, housell, howsell (“household”), Dutch huishouden (“household”) (earlier huishoud), German Low German Huushollen (“household”) (Middle Low German hūsholt), German Haushalt (“household”), Swedish hushåll (“household, family”), Norwegian husholdning (“household”).

cog

Legal or culturally determined unit of people living together.


householder

From Middle English housholdere, equivalent to household + -er. The Buddhist sense is a semantic loan from Pali gahapati (literally “house-master”).

semantic loan

towns in which almost every householder was an English Protestant

1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:


househusband

From house + husband (etymologically equivalent to house + bond).

com

He’s always thought of himself as boring, “a white-bread suburban househusband.”

2022 May 11, Alexandra Alter, quoting Kim Stanley Robinson, “A Sci-Fi Writer Returns to Earth: ‘The Real Story Is the One Facing Us’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

A man who tends to his home as a housekeeper or homemaker; the male equivalent of a housewife.


homemaker

Forty-seven-year-old homemaker and volunteer museum guide, holder of a master's degree in English, married twenty-three years to a professor.

1979, Lillian B. Rubin, Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self, page 233:

(US) A person who maintains the administration and upkeep of his or her residence, especially one who is not employed outside the home; one who runs the household.

رَبّ بَيْت

person who maintains his or her residence


head of household

en-noun

head of household (plural heads of household)

The person responsible for governing a group that lives together, such as a family.


homeowner

He advised homeowners to get insurance before then so they can be grandfathered in as discretionary buyers of flood insurance in a nonflood zone.

2009 June 9, Joseph Berger, “Flood Zone Remapping Hits Hard on Long Island”, in The New York Times:

The homeowner theorized that the intruders saw that the house was up for sale and targeted it for their rager.

2022 June 22, Selim Algar, “Incensed owner of $8M Florida mansion ransacked by teens wants them prosecuted”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-07-03:


housemate

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-housemate.wav

‘“Housemate”,’ he repeated, disdainfully. ‘What does this word imply?’
‘That we are two unpartnered people, sharing the cost of the rent on a house, and are not romantically involved.’

2024, Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time, Sceptre, page 12: