Word.ws English Dictionary

side-wife

side-wife noun: a woman who (among others) has the potential to become one's wife, or who is fulfilling the role of one's wife in addition to one's actual wife; a concubine.

Noun

side-wife (plural side-wives)

  1. A woman who (among others) has the potential to become one's wife, or who is fulfilling the role of one's wife in addition to one's actual wife; a concubine
    • If, however, his wife gave him a handmaiden and he had children by her, he was then barred from taking a side-wife (as a concubine was called).1903, Sydney Russell Wrightington, Horace Williams Fuller, Arthur Weightman Spencer, The Green Bag - Volume 15
    • She was also a 'sidewife'. Nobody talks about it because she is a rich entrepreneur.1998, Yūko Nishimura, Gender, Kinship And Property Rights

Forms of side-wife

pluralside-wives
alternative formside wife
alternative formsidewife

Origin of side-wife

From side + wife. Compare Dutch bijwijf (“concubine”).

Questions about side-wife

What does side-wife mean?
Side-wife means a woman who (among others) has the potential to become one's wife, or who is fulfilling the role of one's wife in addition to one's actual wife; a concubine.
What part of speech is side-wife?
Side-wife is a noun.
What is the plural of side-wife?
The plural of side-wife is side-wives.

Words near side-wife in the dictionary

  1. side-wheel
  2. side-wheeler
  3. side-wheelers
  4. side-whiskered
  5. side-whiskers
  6. side-wife
  7. sidea
  8. sideache
  9. sideaches
  10. sideal
  11. sidearm

Source and license

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