Since last week we looked at the origins of husband, obviously this week we need to look at where the word wife comes from!

Wife, originally spelled wif  or wyf, is from Old English and meant “woman.” By late Old English it had carried the idea of “married woman,” but that was mostly a shortening of the term “wedded wife.” And this particular sense didn’t displace the original sense. We can see that influence still in words like “fishwife” or “midwife,” which do not require the woman in question be married.

By the late 1300s, the idea of “mistress of a household” had begun to be attached to the word, which is in turn where words like “housewife” came from.

It’s interesting to note that our modern woman actually came around because wif didn’t feel “definitive” enough, so people began to say wifman–basically, “female-man.”

While there are plenty of Germanic languages that follow this same root and have similar-sounding or looking words to wife, other European languages instead favor a different root…which we’ll explore next week. 😉

Word Nerds Merch!