Steward

The terms steward or stewardess can refer to a number of different professional roles.

• The title of Steward was sometimes given to the person in charge of a noble's domestic staff and household. Equivalent terms include majordomo, castellan, and seneschal. In some countries, the duties of a steward became more substantial, and included the management of finances and property. The House of Stuart, which eventually became the royal house of Scotland, originally gained both its position and its name from their position as stewards to the king. A fictional example is the Stewards of Gondor, found in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

• A steward or stewardess can be a person employed in attending to the safety and comfort of passengers aboard a ship or an aircraft. In the 1930s, airlines began calling their employees stewardesses (nearly all were female) based on the use of this term on ships. During the 1970s the gender-neutral term flight attendant was adopted, but many still refer to flight attendants as "stewardesses," and the nickname among flight attendants for themselves remains "stew".

• In IT, a steward is somebody who is responsible for managing a set of projects, products or technologies and how they affect the IT Organization in which they belong.

• A shop steward is the local representative of a union in a place of work. They are often unpaid for the work and usually conduct union business in their own time. They recruit for the union, inspect contribution cards, and report grievances to the district committee.