Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
adj
Of, befitting, pertaining to, or characteristic of a wife or wives.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: wifey, wifish, uxorial
Antonyms: none provided
adjective
befitting or characteristic of a wife
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: wifelike, uxorial
Antonyms: husbandly
History
From Middle English wifly, wyfly, from Old English wīflīc (“womanly, wifely”), from Proto-Germanic *wībalīkaz (“wifely”). Cognate with Scots wifely (“womanly, wifely”), Dutch wijflijk, wijfelijk, German weiblich (“feminine, female”). By surface analysis, wife + -ly.
Across languages
2 source translations are retained for this English entry.
