Word.ws English Dictionary

wives-in-law

wives-in-law is the plural of wife-in-law.

Meaning of wife-in-law

Noun

wife-in-law (plural wives-in-law)

  1. A wife in law only, such as one who has abandoned her husband
    Synonyms:
    co-wife, sister-wife
  2. A wife who provides domestic or social support, but not love or affection
  3. Another wife of one's husband. Typically used in cases of divorce and subsequent remarriage for one's husband's ex-wife, but sometimes used in polygamy for a co-wife.
    • Instead she arranges, offhand, a nice little farewell dinner for her husband that was and the lady, Flora, who is to be her successor three months hence. […] Flora is generously constrained to leave the sometime-husband and wife to talk the matter over. "Are we not wives-in-law?" says Madame. And...1922, Felix Emmanuel Schelling, Appraisements and asperities as to some contemporary writers, pages 116–117

Questions about wives-in-law

What is wives-in-law the plural of?
Wives-in-law is the plural of wife-in-law.

Words near wives-in-law in the dictionary

  1. wiver
  2. wivern
  3. wiverns
  4. wivers
  5. wives
  6. wives-in-law
  7. wivesless
  8. wiving
  9. wivish
  10. wivout
  11. WiWa

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wives-in-law (page history and authors); wife-in-law (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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