What is the origin of the word husband?

Answer 1

Middle English huseband, from Old English hūsbōnda, from Old Norse hūsbōndi : hūs, house + bōndi, būandi, householder, present participle of būa, to dwell.

The English word husband, even though it is a basic kinship term, is not a native English word.

It comes ultimately from the Old Norse word hūsbōndi,meaning "master of a house," which was borrowed into Old English as hūsbōnda.

The second element in hūsbōndi, bōndi, means "a man who has land and stock" and comes from the Old Norse verb būa, meaning "to live, dwell, have a household."

The master of the house was usually a spouse as well, of course, and it would seem that the main modern sense of husbandarises from this overlap. When the Norsemen settled in Anglo-Saxon England, they would often take Anglo-Saxon women as their wives; it was then natural to refer to the husband using the Norse word for the concept, and to refer to the wife with her Anglo-Saxon (Old English) designation, wīf, "woman, wife" (Modern English wife).

Interestingly, Old English did have a feminine word related to Old Norse hūsbōndi that meant "mistress of a house," namely, hūsbonde. Had this word survived into Modern English, it would have sounded identical to husband-surely leading to ambiguities.

Extracted from:

husband

Answer 2

O.E. husbonda "male head of a household," probably from O.N. husbondi "master of the house," from hus "house" + bondi "householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant," from buandi, prp. of bua "to dwell" The sense of "peasant farmer" (c.1220) is preserved in husbandry (first attested c.1380 in this sense). Beginning c.1290, replaced O.E. wer as "married man," companion of wif, a sad loss for Eng. poetry. The verb "manage thriftily" is 1440, from the noun in the obsolete sense of "steward" (c.1450). Slang shortening hubby first attested 1688.

Answer 3

from Old Norse hūsbōndi, from hūs house + bōndi householder