Also dial. -folks. [f. women, pl. of WOMAN sb. + FOLK.] a. Women collectively, womankind. Now dial. b. The women of a household, a party, or the like: dial. the female servants.
1811. Gloucester Jrnl., 22 July, 4/4. In the afternoon the womenfolks got about their sewing, not minding the shop so much.
1833. T. Hook, Parson’s Dau., I. vii. You have been snubbed—the women-folk, as I call them, have driven you away.
1849. E. E. Napier, Excurs. S. Africa, II. 389. Making your appearance in such a fashion, and that too, when you know there are women-folk in the house.
1877. Black, Green Past., i. There was a stir among our women-folk.
1879. Burroughs, Locusts & Wild Honey, 131. We could gain no information from the ‘women-folks’ … nor from the men who had just come in.
1896. Rideal (title), Charles Dickens’s Heroines and Women-Folk.
1911. Times, 2 Aug., 3/2. Foreign residents have sent their women-folk by train to Mexico City.
