Word.ws English Dictionary

merwife

merwife noun: a mermaid.

Noun

merwife (plural merwives)

  1. A mermaid.

Forms of merwife

pluralmerwives

Origin of merwife

From Old English merewīf (“water witch, mermaid”), potentially to an earlier Proto-West Germanic *mariwīb, from Proto-Germanic *mariwībą (“mermaid, siren”). By surface analysis, mer- + wife. Cognate with Old High German meriwīb. The construction varries regionally for the same basic folklore in Europe. Compare Old Swedish marnunna (literally “mer-nun”), Swedish havsfru (literally “sea-wife”), English mermaid (literally “mer-maiden”).

Questions about merwife

What does merwife mean?
Merwife means a mermaid.
What part of speech is merwife?
Merwife is a noun.
What is the plural of merwife?
The plural of merwife is merwives.

Words near merwife in the dictionary

  1. Mervine
  2. Mervines
  3. MERVs
  4. Mervyn
  5. Merwan
  6. merwife
  7. Merwin
  8. merwinite
  9. merwitch
  10. merwitches
  11. merwives

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: merwife (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “merwife.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/merwife. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.