WIFE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... pretty—in that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly. "Of course that's the danger with public schools. It would be pleasanter if he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family ...

— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... have him then with the self-appointed mission of choosing a wife. No man had ever held within his soul such volumes of deep sentiment as he could call into his eyes when the occasion required it, and no knight of the age of chivalry ever wooed a fair lady with such winning words and courteous ...

— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... the company seated itself. Brown, drawing back her chair for Mrs. Murdison, who as his most impressive guest he had placed upon his right, noticed, without seeming to notice, that the little watchmaker did the same for his wife, and with an effect of habit. Speaking of wives, the company being left to seat themselves according to their own notion (Brown having considered the question of dinner cards and discarded it), every man sat down beside his own wife, in some instances being surreptitiously jerked into position ...

— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... Abbey and his wife were now like two happy children. Mrs. Abbey fetched the sketches which her husband had begun years ago, and when Bok saw them he was delighted. He realized at once that conditions and choice would conspire to produce Abbey's greatest piece of ...

— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... otherwise, spirit-broken, and suppliant; and he had expected, and hoped to earn, Nefert's thanks as well as her mother's by his generosity. Mena's pretty wife was however absent, and Katuti did not send for her even after he had ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

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