noun
definition
A married woman, especially in relation to her spouse.
definition
The female of a pair of mated animals.
example
A new wife for the gander is introduced into the pen.
noun
definition
An adult female human.
definition
(collective) All females collectively; womankind.
definition
A female person, usually an adult; a (generally adult) female sentient being, whether human, supernatural, elf, alien, etc.
definition
A wife (or sometimes a fiancée or girlfriend).
definition
A female who is extremely fond of or devoted to a specified type of thing. (Used as the last element of a compound.)
definition
A female attendant or servant.
Examples of wives in a Sentence
That's all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's neighbor!
Yet working girls his age were usually either wives or soiled doves.
Was he actually considering having two wives?
This latter had three wives, a Greek woman from Istrus, Opoea a Scythian, and a Thracian daughter to the great chief Teres.
At the corners of the central block are smaller monuments commemorating the Guru's wives.
After 66 years'exile Jeremiah brings back the Jews to Jerusalem, but refuses to admit such as had brought with them heathen wives.
In the approaching disruption writers saw the punishment for the king's apostasy, and they condemn the sanctuaries in Jerusalem which he erected to the gods of his heathen wives.
Another feature of his programme was the community of wives.
A certain Persian king was accustomed to kill his wives on the morning after the consummation of the marriage.
His wives were kept secluded in oriental fashion; a harem was maintained at Lucera, and eunuchs were a prominent feature of his household.
The harem, with separate provisions for four wives, occupied the south corner, the domestic quarters, including stables, kitchen, bakery, wine cellar, &c., being at the east corner, to the north-east of the great entrance court.
During the bitter conflict between laws which forbade sacerdotal marriages and long custom which had permitted them, it was natural that the legislators and the ascetic party generally should studiously speak of the priests' wives as concubines, and do all in their power to reduce them to this position.
The state supports the following charitable and correctional institutions all under the inspection of a State Department of Charities and Correction (1905); hospitals for the insane at Trenton and Morris Plains; a training-school for feeble-minded children (partly supported by the state) and a home for feeble-minded women at Vineland; a sanatorium for tuberculous diseases at Glen Gardner; a village for epileptics, with a farm of 700 acres, near Skillman, Somerset county; a state home (reform school) for boys near Jamesburg, Middlesex county, and for girls in Ewing township, near Trenton; a state reformatory for criminals sixteen to thirty years of age, near Rahway; a state prison at Trenton; a home for disabled soldiers at Kearney,' Hudson county; a home for disabled soldiers, sailors and their wives at Vineland"; and a school for the deaf at Trenton.
They notice the selfdenying affection of the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the husbands, polygamy and the shifting marriage unions.
But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than their own, it seems likely that they had some custom of exogamy which the foreigners did not understand.
In his last years he was given to self indulgence and scandalous excesses, which did not, however, alienate the London citizens, with whose wives he was too familiar.
Ser Piero on his part was four times married, and had by his last two wives nine sons and two daughters; but he had from the first acknowledged the boy Leonardo and brought him up in his own house, principally, no doubt, at Florence.
Some of these titles have been bestowed to give a recognized rank to the morganatic wives and children of royal princes, e.g., the princes of Battenberg, or the title of " princess " of Hohenberg borne by the consort of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand d'Este; others as a reward for distinguished service, e.g.
Spalding (c. 1801-1874), who were accompanied by their wives, the first white women, it is said, to cross the American continent.
Near him lie several of his wives and children; the garden was formerly enclosed by a marble wall; a clear stream waters the flower-beds.
The process was not so hard as might be thought; when once the Danes had settled down, had brought over wives from their native land or taken them from among their English vassals, had built themselves farmsteads and accumulated flocks and herds, they lost their old advantage in contending with the English.
Truculent pamphieteers like Simon Fish, who wrote Beggars Supplication, were already demanding that these sturdy boobies should be set abroad into the world, to get wives of their own, and earn their living by the sweat of their brows, according to the commandment of God; so might the king be better obeyed, matrimony be better kept, the gospel better preached, and none should rob the poor of his alms. It must be added that monastic scandals were not rare; though the majority of the houses were decently ordered, yet the unexceptionable testimony of archiepiscopal and episcopal visitations shows that in the years just before the Reformation there was a certain number of them where chastity of life and honesty of administration were equally unknown.
But beyond this nature did not seem to go in determining the relations of the sexes; accordingly, we find that community of wives was a feature of Zeno's ideal commonwealth, just as it was of Plato's; while, again, the strict.
Thus there had become current the conception of a " state of nature " in which individuals or single families lived side by side - under none other than those " natural " laws which prohibited mutual injury and interference in the free use of the goods of the earth common to all, and upheld parental authority, fidelity of wives, and the observance of compacts freely made.
To all his three wives, in spite of numerous infidelities, he seems to have been warmly attached; and this is perhaps the best trait in a character otherwise more remarkable for arrogance and heat than for any amiable qualities.
Turkish ideas prevail about their social position; but so highly valued are their services, that parents are often unwilling to see their daughters marry; and wives are in many cases older than their husbands.
Polygamy is practised, but not frequently, and from the wife (or wives) there comes no opposition.
On a chief's death wives and slaves were buried alive with him.
However, by an act of 1547 every person entitled to the benefit of clergy is to be allowed the same, "although he hath been divers times married to any single woman or single women, or to any widow or widows, or to two wives or more."
The bright prospects thus opening up were clouded by the death of Radama at the age of thirty-six, and the seizure of the royal authority by one of his wives, the Princess Ranavalona.
From time to time additional settlers arrived or shipwrecked mariners decided to remain; in 1827 five coloured women from St Helena were induced to migrate to Tristan to become the wives of the five bachelors then on the island.
Wispohahp is the Aht Noah, who, with his wife, his two brothers and their wives escaped from the deluge in a canoe.
In his old age, one of his wives Sobh (the Daybreak), a Basque, bore him the first son born in his harem.
Then, the Tigris having undermined part of the city wall, he collected his wives and treasures and burned them with himself in his palace (880 B.C.).
Of the latter many were accompanied by their wives, though the Russian law allows divorce in the case of such sentences; the emperor unwillingly allowed the devoted women to go, but decreed that any children born to them in Siberia would be illegitimate.
Their wives, Paulette for Paul and Ginger for straitlaced Joseph, were a contrast in themselves.
I see you've had in-depth conversations with my stepsons, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee—and their lovely wives!
He killed his wives in cold blood after they gave birth to his sons, until he tangled with the demoness that was Rhyn's mother.
The oddities of Tiyan made him recall the wives' tales told about the city's magical powers.
He was well aware that Guardians usually took the Naturals they were assigned as girlfriends or wives.
Wives are not mere appendages or chattels of their husbands, rather the welfare of his wife must be a man's first concern.
Sons and husbands donned aprons and waited on mothers and wives at the supper table.
He was made the first Protestant archbishop by King Henry VIII, and helped him to divorce several of his wives.
His wives sometimes bickered among themselves and even once engaged in a petty plot against him.
Another fine old boatyard bulldozed aside and replaced by another Stepford wives style housing estate.
Wives of the unemployed could obtain no relief unless deserted, a provision which encouraged the breakup of destitute families.
Some players had professional caddies; others had wives, girlfriends, brothers or dads.
The ethical structure of that day covered wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels.
It may be talking about requirements on the wives of deacons, and it may be talking about requirements on the female deacons.
Sadly, most of them already have girlfriends or wives helping them with their tables.