WIFE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Wife

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/waɪf/ Listen

noun

Wife n. (pl. wives)

A woman; an adult female; now used in literature only in certain compounds and phrases, as alewife, fishwife, goodwife, and the like. " Both men and wives." "On the green he saw sitting a wife."

The lawful consort of a man; a woman who is united to a man in wedlock; a woman who has a husband; a married woman; correlative of husband. " The husband of one wife." "Let every one you... so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

To give to wife, To take to wife, to give or take (a woman) in marriage.

Wife's equity (Law), the equitable right or claim of a married woman to a reasonable and adequate provision, by way of settlement or otherwise, out of her choses in action, or out of any property of hers which is under the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, for the support of herself and her children.

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Etymology of 'Wife'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wife" Quotes from Famous Books

... said Vanderlyn, at length. "Of being the father of the dearest girl in all the world, who has promised to become my wife?" ...

— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... herself as an unfortunate victim of circumstances, and the inhuman cruelty of relatives. For she belonged, like her husband, to a very respectable family, as the Maumejans might easily ascertain by inquiry. Vantrasson's sister was the wife of a man named Greloux, who had once been a bookbinder in the Rue Saint-Denis, but who had now retired from business with a competency. "Why had this Greloux refused to save them from bankruptcy? Because one could never hope for a favor from relatives," she groaned; "they ...

— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... marriage and the family, we find Jesus making the same objection to that individual appropriation of human beings which is the essence of matrimony as to the individual appropriation of wealth. A married man, he said, will try to please his wife, and a married woman to please her husband, instead of doing the work of God. This is another version of "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Eighteen hundred years later we find a very different person from Jesus, Talleyrand to wit, saying the ...

— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... to deceive you; they are not in agreement with themselves; their heart continually revolts, and their very words often contradict themselves. This man who mocks at everything good would be in despair if his wife held the same views. Another extends his indifference to good morals even to his future wife, or he sinks to such depths of infamy as to be indifferent to his wife's conduct; but go a step further; speak ...

— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... he seems to have given intirely into that way of living which his father propos'd to him; and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of settlement he continu'd for some time, 'till an extravagance that he was guilty of forc'd him both out ...

— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

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