DOMESTIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does domestic mean? 

• DOMESTIC (noun)
  The noun DOMESTIC has 1 sense:

1. a servant who is paid to perform menial tasks around the household

  Familiarity information: DOMESTIC used as a noun is very rare.

• DOMESTIC (adjective)
  The adjective DOMESTIC has 5 senses:

1. of concern to or concerning the internal affairs of a nation

2. of or relating to the home

3. of or involving the home or family

4. converted or adapted to domestic use

5. produced in a particular country

  Familiarity information: DOMESTIC used as an adjective is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DOMESTIC (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A servant who is paid to perform menial tasks around the household

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

domestic; domestic help; house servant

Hypernyms ("domestic" is a kind of...):

retainer; servant (a person working in the service of another (especially in the household))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "domestic"):

ayah ((in India) a native nursemaid who looks after children)

home help (a person hired to help in another's home (especially one employed by a local authority to help the infirm with domestic work))

housekeeper (a servant who is employed to perform domestic task in a household)

amah; housemaid; maid; maidservant (a female domestic)

skivvy; slavey (a female domestic servant who does all kinds of menial work)

• DOMESTIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of concern to or concerning the internal affairs of a nation

Context example:

domestic issues such as tax rate and highway construction

Similar:

municipal (of or relating to the government of a municipality)

home; interior; internal; national (inside the country)

Also:

national (limited to or in the interests of a particular nation)

Antonym:

foreign (of concern to or concerning the affairs of other nations (other than your own))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Of or relating to the home

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

domestic science

Pertainym:

home (housing that someone is living in)

Derivation:

domesticity (domestic activities or life)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Of or involving the home or family

Context example:

an author of blood-and-thunder novels yet quite domestic in his taste

Similar:

domesticated (accustomed to home life)

home-loving (devoted to home duties and pleasures)

home-style (as if in the home)

housewifely (related or suited to a housewife)

husbandly (related to or suited to a husband)

Attribute:

domesticity (the quality of being domestic or domesticated)

Antonym:

undomestic (not domestic or related to home)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Converted or adapted to domestic use

Synonyms:

domestic; domesticated

Context example:

domesticated plants like maize

Similar:

tame; tamed (brought from wildness into a domesticated state)

Derivation:

domesticity (the quality of being domestic or domesticated)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Produced in a particular country

Context example:

domestic oil

Similar:

native (characteristic of or existing by virtue of geographic origin)

 Context examples 

We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night, about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The domestic pig Sus scrofa domestica.

(Pig, NCI Thesaurus)

My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Whether it ever rises again, depends upon the reception given the first act of the domestic drama called Little Women.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I called you back for some more serious purpose than to mix you up with our little domestic pleasantries.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his element: there his faculties stagnate—they cannot develop or appear to advantage.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

There were some really curious pieces of mediæval domestic architecture within.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Person declares that a domestic partnership relationship exists.

(Domestic Partnership, NCI Thesaurus/CDISC)