wife 
wife (wīf)
noun pl. wiveswīvz
- a woman: still so used in such compounds as midwife, housewife, etc.
- a married woman; specif., a woman in her relationship to her husband
Etymology: ME < OE wif, woman, akin to Swed viv, Ger weib < ? IE base *weip-, to twist, turn, wrap, in sense “the hidden or veiled person”
take to wife
Archaic to marry (a specified woman)
wife
n.
take to wife
Converse of object
- estrange: Some say that Kinser, 33, was a man-about-town, who was having an affair with Malcolm's estranged wife.
- love: Dearly loved wife of Les, much loved mother of Barry, dear nan of Hannah.
Adjective modifier
- beloved: Tony has written elsewhere of his beloved wife: " She was my socialist soulmate.
- loving: Loving wife of the late Albert, and much loved mother of Reg and Neil.
- devoted: His son's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and threatening and his devoted wife begins to grow distant.
- long-suffering: Colin Degrease, 32, donned the pristine Y-fronts at the insistence of his long-suffering wife Donna.
- ex: I don't seem to be able to come to terms with my feelings toward my husband's ex wife.
- second: He has an illegitimate child by the second wife who lives in Germany.
Modifies a noun
- tale: The second experiment was to see whether putting banana skins under cabbage plants made them grow faster as the old wives tale suggests.
- murderer: Welcome as fleas interviewed on october the young writer of wife murderers.
- team: We are a husband and wife team, Steve and Hannah Robinson.
Noun used with modifier
- lady: But Nestor himself slept in the innermost room of the tall building, and with him his lady wife for love and comfort.
Possessives
- sister: Susan is surprised when she finds out she was Jerry's first wife's sister.
- death: They returned to Cambridge where, following his wife's death in 1991, he continued to live until his death on November 17.
Possessives
- footballer: That's odd; because I'm thinking footballer's wife crossed with Russian pimp.
- farmer: Into their world wanders a bored young farmer's wife who provokes a tragedy by playing the sex kitten.
- brother: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; she is your brother's nakedness.
- father: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness.
- son: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness.
Preposition: of
- banker: Also on the series was Kelly Harmon as Sunny Hayward, the wife of a powerful banker who was having an affair with Joe.
There are some others that account wife and children but as bills of charge.
An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.
Some people are better off deadölike your wife and my father for instance.
Liquide constet inter virum et uxorem amorem sibi locum vindicare non posse. It is clearly certain that between man and wife love can claim no place.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife.
Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.
Each coming together of a man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure; each winning should necessitate a fresh wooing.
And God spake all these words, saying,Iamthe L thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that isinheaven above, or that isin the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the L thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thoushalt nottakethename of the L thy God invain; for the L will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember thesabbath day, to keep it holy. Six daysthou shalt labour and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the L thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the L made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the L blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long uponthelandwhichtheL thy Godgiveththee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,öif you did not come inonthewife'sside,öif youdid not sneak intothehouse in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,ölook about you Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world.
There is no reason why the infield should not try to put the batter off his stride at the critical moment, by neatly- timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability.
These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.
Le divorce a ordinairement une grande utilite¤ politique;
Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence.
Giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel.
Have I a wife? Bedam I have! But we was badly mated. Ihit hera greatclout onenight And now we'reseparated. And mornin's going to me work I meets her on the quay: 'Good mornin'to you, ma'am!'says I,'To hell with ye!' says she.
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
And unto Adam he said,Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which Icommandedthee, saying,Thoushalt noteatof it: cursed istheground for thysake; insorrowshaltthoueat of it all the days of thy life.
But hethat ismarried careth for thethings that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
Ah! gentle dames! it gars me greet, To think how mony counsels sweet, How mony lengthen'd sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises!
Ay, ay, I have experience: I have a wife, and so forth.
Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.
Dear husband! I take shame to myself that my purpose was less firm, that my heart lingered so far behind yours in preparing for this great epoch in our lives; that like Lot's wife, I still turned and looked back, and clung with all my strength to the land I was leaving. It was not the hardships of an emigrant's life I dreaded. I could bear mere physical privations philosophically enough; it was the loss of society in which I had moved, the want of congenial minds, of persons engaged in congenial pursuits, that made me so reluctant to respond to my husband's call.
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drewa system of ethics, compounded of misanthropyand voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife.
: Come, indeed, la, you are such a fool, still! : No, but half a one,Win; you are thet'other half: man and wife make one fool,Win.
Greater lovethanthis,hesaid, nomanhaththat a manlay down his wife for his friend.Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail.
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, Is a keen observer of life, The word 'Intellectual'suggests straight away A man who's untrue to his wife.
There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, thanthemanwho has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.
In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.
Every good painter who aspires to the creation of genuine masterpieces should first of all marry my wife.
It little profits that an idle king By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an age' d wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle-class unit.
My soul's a trampled duelling ground where Sade, the gallant marquis, fences for his life against the invulnerable retrograde Masoch, his shade, more constant than a wife.
My most neglected wife, till you are a much respected widow,I find you will scarce be a contented woman, and to say no more than the plain truth, I do endeavour so fairly to do you that last good service.
When the parish priest rebuked him for his celibacy, saying it would lead him into debaucheryand sin, hesaid that a man who had to be muzzled bya wife as a protection against debauchery was not worthy of the joy of innocence. After that people began to treat him with priestly respect.
That's my first wife up there and this is the present Mrs Harris.
My wife, who, poor wretch, is troubled with her lonely life.
Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validius videtur, dulcius mihi semper exstitit amic× vocabulum; aut si non indigneris, concubin× vel scorti. Ifthename of wifeseemsmore blessed or more binding, always sweeter to me will be the word lover, or if I may, concubine or whore.
Nature meant me A wife, a silly, harmless, household dove, Fond without art, and kind without deceit; But Fortune, that has made a mistress of me, Has thrust me out to the wide world, unfurnish'd Of falsehood to be happy.
They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.
Other people's babiesö That's my life! Mother to dozens, And nobody's wife.
There is no fury like an ex-wife looking for a new lover.
One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.
Rearrange a 'Wife's'affection! When they dislocate my Brain! Amputate my freckled Bosom! Make me bearded like a man!
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
Remember Lot's wife.
Commuteröone who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train, And then rides back to shave again.
That damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirelyand helplesslyat his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife.
You help them get elected, and then the Senate becomes the wife, the mistress. That was one lady I couldn't begin to fight. She was too tough.
And the L God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LGod had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said,This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Thereforeshall a manleavehisfatherand hismother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
The consumer isn't a moron. She's your wife.
Sic a wife as Willie's wife, I wad na gie a button for her.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.
Un mari porte un masque avec le monde, et une grimace avec sa femme. A husbandwears a mask intheworld and a smirk withhis wife.
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States.Eachsuburbanwifestruggledwith it alone. Asshe made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at nightöshe was afraid to ask even of herself the silent questionö'Is this all?'
Of course I didn't take my wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present.It was her birthday.Would Ihavegot married during the football season? And anyway it wasn't Rochdale, it was Rochdale reserves.
My message to the businessmen of this country when they go abroad on business is that there is one good thing above all they can take with them to stop them catching AIDSöand that is the wife.
And Tib my wife, that as her life Loveth well good ale to seek, Full oft drinks she, till ye may see The tears run down her cheeks.
What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.
I thought I was Chief of Staff to the President, not to his wife.
'It's I, JamieTelfer o'the fair Dodhead, And a harried man I think I be! There's naething left at the fair Dodhead But a waefu' wife and bairnies three.'
And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
Widowed wife, and married maid, Betrothed, betrayer, and betrayed!
The comfortable estate of widowhood, is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yetthey are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), becausetheir tenderness isnot so oft called upon.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for theyare impediments to great enterprises, eitherof virtue or mischief.Certainly thebest works, and ofgreatest meritfor thepublic, haveproceededfromthe unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.
There lived a wife at Usher's Well, And a wealthy wife was she; She had three stout and stalwart sons, And sent them o'er the sea.
The deil cam fiddlin thro'the town, And danc'd awa wi' th' Exciseman; And ilka wife cries, auld Mahoun, I wish you luck o'the prize, man!
Asthe climbing up a sandy way isto the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man.
My wife had an uncle who could never walk down the nave of his abbey without wondering whether it would take spin.
All my wife has ever taken from the Mediterraneanö from that whole vast intuitive cultureöare four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps.
Coniunx est mihi, sunt nati: dedimus tot pignora fatis. I have a wife, I have sons: we have given so many hostages to the fates. See Bacon 48:86.
Ihave only toomuch of awife inthis art of mine, who has always kept me in tribulation, and my children shall be the works I leave, which, even if theyare naught, will live a while.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
It's a funny kind of month,October. For the really keen cricket fan it's when you realise that your wife left you in May.
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Nothing else that a wife may suffer, equals this: if she loses her husband, she loses her life.
WemetDr Hall insuchverydeep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.
Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It's our only joke. Every woman knows that.
On his death bed poor Lubin lies: His spouse is in despair. With frequent sobs and mutual cries They both express their care. A different cause, says parson Sly, The same effect may give: Poor Lubin fears, that he shall die: His wife, that he may live.
I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone.
Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.
He that may be but sturt or stryfe,
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