wife
noun
Simple meaning
The female of a pair of mated animals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wyfIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwaɪf
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The female of a pair of mated animals.
A married woman; a man's partner in marriage
A married woman, especially in relation to her spouse.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The female of a pair of mated animals.
Used this way, wife is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his family were told to flee without looking back.
Two people who are married to each other.
Neither spouse can divulge confidential communications from the other while they were married.
Bluish and bronze wrasse.
A wife who is an attractive young woman.
A woman who was formerly a particular man's wife.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: female of a pair of mated animals
Antonyms
Sense: female of a pair of mated animals
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.