wife
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "wife", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "wife" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "wife" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
wife is aEnglishnoun. It means: A married woman, especially in relation to her spouse. Pronounced /wæf/. It ranks #601 in English word frequency. Often confused with win and WTF.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | wife |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /wæf/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #601 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for wife is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wæf/. Corpus data places it at rank #601 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for wife, with forms such as "iwfe", "wfie", and "wief". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "win", "WTF", "WWE", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *wībą Proto-West Germanic *wīb Old English wīf Middle English wyf English wife Inherited from Middle English wyf, wif, from Old English wīf (“woman, wife”), from Proto-West Germanic *wīb, from Proto-Germanic *wībą (“woman; wife… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is wife, spelled W-I-F-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A married woman, especially in relation to her spouse.
- 2The female of a pair of mated animals.
- 3Synonym of woman.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *wībą Proto-West Germanic *wīb Old English wīf Middle English wyf English wife Inherited from Middle English wyf, wif, from Old English wīf (“woman, wife”), from Proto-West Germanic *wīb, from Proto-Germanic *wībą (“woman; wife”). Cognates Germanic cognates include Scots wife (“wife; woman”), North Frisian wuf, wüf (“wife, woman”), Saterland Frisian Wieuw (“woman; wife; female”), West Frisian wiif (“wife; woman”), Cimbrian baibe, baip (“wife; woman”), Dutch wijf (“woman; female”), German Weib (“woman; wife; female”), German Low German Wiev (“woman; female”), Mòcheno baib (“woman”), Vilamovian bow (“wife; woman”), Yiddish ווײַב (vayb, “wife; woman”) Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish viv (“wife; woman”), Faroese vív (“wife; woman”), Icelandic víf (“wife; woman”). The further etymology is unknown, with a number of disputed suggestions. One suggestion connects Tocharian A/B kip/kwīpe (“genitals, female pudenda”), for a hypothetical Indo-European *gʰwíbʰ- (“pudenda”). Another suggestion connects Old English wǣfan (“wrap, clothe”), Old Norse vífa (“wrap, veil”) for a suggested original motive of "married woman wearing a scarf". Yet another suggestion connects Old High German weibōn (“move to and fro”), Old Norse veifa (“swing, throw”), for a motive of "one who is moving busily; housekeeper, maidservant" (cf. German Weibel (“manservant, usher”)).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: iwfe,wfie,wief,wiffe,wwife
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for wife
Misspelling Variants of "wife"
Frequency rank: #601 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: