Word.ws English Dictionary

wively

wively is the obsolete form of wifely.

Meaning of wifely

Adjective

wifely (comparative wifelier, superlative wifeliest)

  1. Of, befitting, pertaining to, or characteristic of a wife or wives.
    • Being a domestic man, John decidedly missed the wifely attentions he had been accustomed to receive; but, as he adored his babies, he cheerfully relinquished his comfort for a time, supposing, with masculine ignorance, that peace would soon be restored.1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, “On the Shelf”, in Little Women: […], 2nd part, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, pages 216–217
    Synonyms:
    wifey, wifish, uxorial

Forms of wively

comparativemore wively
superlativemost wively

Origin of wively

From Middle English wifly. By surface analysis, wife + -ly.

Questions about wively

What is wively the obsolete form of?
Wively is the obsolete form of wifely.

Words near wively in the dictionary

  1. wivehood
  2. wiveless
  3. Wiveliscombe
  4. Wivelsfield
  5. Wivelsfield Green
  6. wively
  7. Wivenhoe
  8. wiver
  9. wivern
  10. wiverns
  11. wivers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wively (page history and authors); wifely (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: “wively.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wively. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.