Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Stewardess |
StewardessNoun1. A woman steward on an airplane. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "stewardess" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1808. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Flight attendants, formerly called stewardesses (because originally nearly all were female) and stewards, hold the primary responsibility for the safety and comfort of airline passengers. The role is based on similar jobs on passenger ships, but has more direct involvement because of the confined quarters and shorter travel times on airplanes.When airliners were first introduced in the 1930s, the stewardesses (most were women at that time) were required to be registered nursess, but that requirement was relaxed over the years as airline travel became more common.
The primary responsibility of the job is the safety of the passengers, but most of the work is customer service, serving meals and drinks and accommodating the individual needs of passengers. These roles sometimes conflict, as when flight attendants must cut off drinks for a passenger who has had too much, or force passengers to fasten seat belts, sit down, or otherwise follow safe procedures.
Particularly in the 1960s and 1970s the airlines contributed to confusion about these roles by advertising the attractiveness and friendliness of the stewardesses. One airline used named pictures stewardesses with captions like "I'm Kristin. Fly me." Another airline had the stewardesses changing clothes during the flight, wearing one garment while greeting passengers and another for serving meals. This practice was advertised as "the air strip" with accompanying bump-and-grind music. A policy of at least one airline required that only unmarried women could be flight attendants.
The 1967 book Coffee, Tea, or Me?: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones emphasized this aspect of the role. In fact, given the relative affluence of airline passengers and the presence of attractive young women, many marriages and other relationships undoubtedly began on planes.
On the other hand, in the 1980s, The Replacements sang a song called "Waitress in the Sky" about the drearier aspects of the work.
Airlines were accustomed to taking women off the job after years of experience if they were deemed too old or unattractive, but a decision of the National Labor Relations Board ended that practice and recognized the professionalism of the job. [When did that ruling happen?] By the end of the 1970s, airlines called them "flight attendants".
The role of flight attendants received heightened prominence after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack when flight attendants actively attempted to protect passengers from assault and also provided vital information to air traffic controllers on the attacks. This led to added security responsibilities for flight attendants.
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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Flight attendant."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A steward (if male) or stewardess (if female) is a person employed in attending to the safety and comfort of passengers aboard a ship.
Airline stewardesses
In the 1930s, airlines began calling their employees with similar duties stewardesses (nearly all were female). During the 1970s the gender-neutral term flight attendant was adopted. Persons who learned the term before that often still call flight attendants "stewardesses".
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Steward."
Synonyms: StewardessSynonyms: air hostess (n), hostess (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Mariner | Aerial navigator, aeronaut, balloonist, Icarus; aeroplanist, airman, aviator, birdman, man-bird, wizard of the air, aviatrix, flier, pilot, test pilot, glider pilot, bush pilot, navigator, flight attendant, steward, stewardess, crew; astronaut, cosmonaut; parachutist, paratrooper. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Stewardess |
| Non-English Usage: "Stewardess" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Dutch (air hostess, stewardess), German (air hostess, hostess, stewardess), Hungarian (air hostess), Swedish (stewardess). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | You threatened that stewardess with a bomb (Meet the Parents; writing credit: Greg Glienna; Mary Ruth Clarke) Stewardess! Get me another seat (Rush Hour; writing credit: Jim Kouf) Stewardess! Oh Stewardess (Con Air; writing credit: Scott Rosenberg) Well, the first stewardess is at the controls, but she she's in constant touch with the tower (Airport 1975; writing credit: Don Ingalls) Now why would a stewardess be bringing me fifty grand (Jackie Brown; writing credit: Quentin Tarantino) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Top stewardess monogatari (1990) Stewardess School (1986) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Stewardess" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 96.36% of the time. "Stewardess" is used about 55 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 96.36% | 53 | 46,657 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 3.64% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 55 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "stewardess": saloon stewardess. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "stewardess": air-stewardess, sex-stewardess. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "stewardess"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | stjuardesë (air hostess, hostess). (various references) | |
Arabic | مضيفة (hostess), صاحبة نزل. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | стюардеса (air hostess, hostess). (various references) | |
Chinese | 空中小姐, 女服物" . (various references) | |
Czech | stevardka (hostess), letuška (air hostess, hostess). (various references) | |
Danish | vaertinde (hostess), togvaertinde (hostess), togstewardesse (hostess). (various references) | |
Dutch | stewardess (air hostess). (various references) | |
Esperanto | stevardino, aerstevardino. (various references) | |
Faeroese | flogterna. (various references) | |
Farsi | مهماندارهواپیما, ناظرخرج مونث . (various references) | |
Finnish | siivooja (chambermaid, charwoman, cleaner), tarjoilijatar (barmaid, waitress). (various references) | |
French | hôtesse de l'air, hôtesse. (various references) | |
German | Aufwärterin. (various references) | |
Greek | συνοδόσ (chaperon, companion, escort, squire, usher), συνοδός γυναίκα (hostess), γυναίκα καμαρότοσ, ξεναγός (guide, tour guide), επιστάτησ (caretaker, custodian, foreman, gaffer, janitor, steward, superintendent, supervisor), τροφοδότησ (caterer, commissary, refectioner, steward, victualer, victualler). (various references) | |
Hawaiian | stjuardesë (air hostess). (various references) | |
Hebrew | "ילת (air hostess, hostess). (various references) | |
Hungarian | légikisasszony (air hostess). (various references) | |
Italian | hostess (hostess), assistente di viaggio (hostess). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | スチール家具 (SBR, steel furniture, steward, student apathy, student power, Stueber, styrene, styrene paper, styrene-butadiene rubber, Styrol condensor), スチレン樹脂 (steak, stool, styrene resin, Styrol), エール大学 (acquired immune deficiency syndrome, aerobic dancing, aerobicise, aerobics, aerodynamics, aerogram, aerosol, aid, AIDS, AIDS virus, air, air bag, air brake, air breathing engine, air cargo, air check, air circulating system, air cleaner, air compressor, air conditioner, air conditioning, air curtain, air cushion, air dome, air door, air force, air girl, air gun, air hostess, air mail, air mattress, air pad, air pageant, air people, air pocket, air pot, air pump, air rifle, air right, air service, air shoot, air shuttle, air sick, air suspension, air terminal, air towel, airborne, airbrush, Airbus, airline, airport, airport tax, airsick bag, airsickness, airway, alias, alien, Edam cheese, eight, eight beat, exercising with aerobics, hit point, home page, HP, on-air monitor, Yale University). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | スッチ , スチュワーデス , エアホステス (air hostess), エアガール (air girl). (various references) | |
Korean | 스튜어""스. (various references) | |
Manx | ben veoir (mayoress). (various references) | |
Papiamen | stiwardès (air hostess). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ewardessstay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | hospedeira de bordo (pt.), hospedeira (hostess, nurse, recepting animal), criada de bordo, comissária de bordo, aeromoça (air-hostess). (various references) | |
Romanian | stewardesã. (various references) | |
Russian | стюардесса (air hostess). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | stjuardesa (air hostess), upravnica (manageress). (various references) | |
Spanish | azafata (air hostess, escort, hostess). (various references) | |
Swedish | stewardess. (various references) | |
Turkish | kamarot (cabin boy, steward), hostes (air hostess, flight attendant, hostess), bayan kamarot. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | стюардеса (air hostess, hostess), покоївка (chamber-maid, housemaid). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "stewardess": stewardesses. (additional references) | |
| |
"Stewardess" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: stewardiss, stewartes, stewartess, stuwardess. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "stewardess" (pronounced stuw"erdus) |
| 4 | -er d u s | cowardice, hazardous. |
| 3 | -d u s | exodus, goddess, gradus, Hondas, horrendous, jaundice, Judas, modus, prejudice, stupendous, tremendous. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-e-r-s-s-s-t-w" | |
-2 letters: asserted, desserts, dewaters, stewards, stressed, sweaters, tarweeds. | |
-3 letters: asserts, dearest, derates, deserts, dessert, dewater, drawees, dresses, easters, redates, resawed, reseats, resedas, searest, seaters, sedater, sedates, seesaws, steward, strawed, strewed, sweated, sweater, tarweed, teasers, tessera, trasses, tressed, tresses, wadsets, wasters, watered, westers, wrasses, wrested. | |
-4 letters: aretes, assert, assets, asters, daters, derate, derats, desert, deters. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-e-e-r-s-s-s-t-w" | |
+2 letters: stewardesses, sweaterdress, tawdrinesses. | |
+3 letters: outwardnesses. | |
+4 letters: sweaterdresses, towardlinesses, untowardnesses. | |
+5 letters: withdrawnnesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
