Definition of "wife" in English

noun

1. A married woman, especially in relation to her spouse.

   • The Fisherman and His Wife
   • 1952, P. G. Wodehouse, Big Business, in 'A Few Quick Ones', Everyman, London: 2009, p 127-8. All through Reginald's deeply moving performance she had sat breathless, her mind in a whirl and her soul stirred to her very depths. With each low note that he pulled up from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew ... that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere, particularly as the wife of a man with large ears and no chin, who looked as if he were about to start in the two-thirty race at Kempton Park.

2. The female of a pair of mated animals.

   • A new wife for the gander is introduced into the pen.

3. (Scotland, otherwise puristic) Synonym of woman.

verb

1. (colloquial, originally African-American Vernacular) To marry (a woman).