wive
/waɪv/verb
wive is a verb meaning “To marry (a woman)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled W-I-V-E, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does wive mean?
verb
- 1
To marry (a woman).
- 2
To provide (someone) with a wife.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce wive?
- /waɪv/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-wive.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of wive
- wives present, singular, he/she/it
- wiving participle, present
- wived participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is wive?
Wive appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 127,184th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Wive in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense to marry (a woman):
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does wive come from?
From Middle English wiven, iwiven, from Old English wīfian, wīfiġan, ġewīfian (“to take a wife; marry”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).