Word.ws English Dictionary

wifery

wifery noun: the state of being a wife.

Noun

wifery (uncountable)

  1. The state of being a wife.
    • Last of all is the girl who isn’t often heard from, the happy young woman who is really fulfilled by motherhood and wifery, and who may dip into one or all of the above five options from time to time, but only for fun.1976, Electa Clark, Leading Ladies: An Affectionate Look at American Women of the Twentieth Century, New York, N.Y.: Stein and Day, →ISBN, page 190
    • Mary: Maybe I should never have married, never had children—but those possibilities didn’t exist in the world in which I grew up. […] Linda: We were taught that motherhood and wifery are so fulfilling, and then we had to learn to live with the secret guilt when they weren’t fulfilling.1977, Paula McDonald, Dick McDonald, Guilt-Free, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, page 164

Examples of wifery in a sentence

  • He cannot help observing that she, however dwindled her love for her cuckolded husband, is securely attached to the social role and domestic furniture that come with her wifery.1986, John Updike, Roger’s Version, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 239:
  • Eventually, if a woman were sufficiently wealthy, her wifery could be constructed on terms in which her husband was not the recipient of her labor.1997, Miriam B. Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 98:
  • And challenges outside of motherhood and wifery.’2004, Miranda Lee, Bedded by the Boss, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 84:
  • Outside of the reality of my parents' relationship, I didn't see many examples of enviable wifery.2011 March 16, Robyn Okrant, “It Took a Village: Nature, Nurture and Pop Culture”, in HuffPost, archived from the original on 02 Apr 2023:

Origin of wifery

From wife + -ry.

Words formed from wifery

Questions about wifery

What does wifery mean?
Wifery means the state of being a wife.
How do you use wifery in a sentence?
He cannot help observing that she, however dwindled her love for her cuckolded husband, is securely attached to the social role and domestic furniture that come with her wifery.
What part of speech is wifery?
Wifery is a noun.

Words near wifery in the dictionary

  1. wifeling
  2. wifelings
  3. wifelkin
  4. wifelkins
  5. wifely
  6. wifery
  7. wifes
  8. wifes up
  9. wifeship
  10. wifeships
  11. wifestyle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wifery (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: “wifery.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wifery. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.