Word.ws English Dictionary

old wives

old wives is the plural of old wife.

Meaning of old wife

Noun

old wife (plural old wives)

  1. An old woman, later especially one who tells old wives' tales.
    • Once John, being overtaken in drink on the roadside by the cottage, and dreaming that he was burning in hell, awoke and saw the old wife hobbling toward him. Thereupon he fled soberly to the hills, and from that day became a quiet-living, humble-minded Christian.1902 January, John Buchan, “The Outgoing of the Tide”, in The Watcher by the Threshold, and Other Tales, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1902, →OCLC, pages 230–231
  2. the alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus)
  3. A species of perciform fish endemic to the temperate coastal waters of Australia (Enoplosus armatus)
  4. Balistes vetula (Queen triggerfish)
  5. Certain spot-tail porgies (Diplodus ascensionis, Diplodus helenae)
  6. Spondyliosoma cantharus (black seabream)

See all 10 meanings of old wife

Questions about old wives

What is old wives the plural of?
Old wives is the plural of old wife.

Words near old wives in the dictionary

  1. old wife
  2. Old Windsor
  3. old wine in a new bottle
  4. old wine in new bottles
  5. old wise tale
  6. old wives
  7. old wives' tale
  8. old wives' tales
  9. old wivish
  10. Old Woking
  11. Old Wolverton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old wives (page history and authors); old wife (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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