Search the Dictionary

A female fortune teller. [Scot.]

not dissolve the marriage bond, but merely authorizes a separate life of the husband and wife. Abbott.

c. (b) The voluntary leaving of a person to whom one is bound by a special relation, as a wife, husband, or child; desertion.

A man who assists women in childbirth; a man midwife; an obstetrician.

A midwife. [Recent] Dunglison.

A man who commits adultery; a married man who has sexual intercourse with a woman not his wife.

ied person to the marriage bed; sexual intercourse by a married man with another than his wife, or voluntary sexual intercourse by a married woman with another than her husband.

Settlement on a wife, or jointure. [Obs.] Bacon.

Relationship by marriage (as between a husband and his wife's blood relations, or between a wife and her husband's blood relations); -- in contradistinction to consanguinity, or relationship by blood; -- followed by with, to, or between. Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh. 1 Kings iii. 1.

rked incivility. How can any one imagine that the fathers would have dared to affront the wife of Aurelius Addison.

An allowance made to a wife out of her husband's estate or income for her support, upon her divorce or legal separation from him, or during a suit for the same. Wharton. Burrill.

The act alluring; temptation; enticement. Though Adam by his wife's allurement fell. Milton.

Same as Alewife.

A female ambassador; also, the wife of an ambassador. Prescott.

Done out of love. [Obs.] Lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this Ford's wife. Shak.

The string of an apron. To be tied to a wife's or mother's apron strings, to be unduly controlled by a wife or mother. He was so made that he could not submit to be tied to the apron strings even of the best of wives. Macaulay.

of one's father or mother; -- correlative to nephew or niece. Also applied to an uncle's wife.

A husband; as, baron and feme, husband and wife. [R.] Cowell. Baron of beef, two sirloins not cut asunder at the backbone. -- Barons of the Cinque Ports, formerly members of the House of Commons, elected by the seven Cinque Ports, two for each port. -- Baron of the exchequer, the judges of the Court of Exchequer, one…

A baron's wife; also, a lady who holds the baronial title in her own right; as, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

probably of the 11th century, and is attributed by tradition to Matilda, the Conqueror's wife.