Wife

A wife is a female lifetime partner in a continuing marital relationship. A wife may also be referred to as a spouse. The term continues to be applied to a woman who has separated from her husband and ceases to be applied to such a woman only when her marriage has come to an end following a legally recognised divorce or the death of her spouse. The rights and obligations of the wife in relation to her husband and others, and her status in the community and in law, varies between cultures and has varied over time. In a heterosexual relationship, a woman's spouse is her husband.

Famous quotes containing the word wife:

“A man will teach his wife what is needed to arouse his desires. And there is no reason for a woman to know any more than what her husband is prepared to teach her. If she gets married knowing far too much about what she wants and doesn’t want then she will be ready to find fault with her husband.”
—Barbara Cartland (b. 1901)

““Come, come” said Tom’s father, “at your time of life,
There’s no longer excuse for thus playing the rake—
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.”
“Why, so it is, father—whose wife shall I take?””
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

“The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)