Wife

A wife (pl.: wives) is a woman in a marital relationship. A woman who has separated from her partner continues to be a wife until their marriage is legally dissolved with a divorce judgment; or until death, depending on the kind of marriage. On the death of her partner, a wife is referred to as a widow. The rights and obligations of a wife to her partner and her status in the community and law vary between cultures and have varied over time.

The word is of Germanic origin from the Proto-Germanic word wībam, which translates into "woman". In Middle English, it had the form wif, and in Old English wīf, "woman or wife". It is related to Modern German Weib (woman, female), Danish viv (wife, usually poetic), and Dutch wijf (woman, generally pejorative, cf. bitch). The original meaning of the phrase "wife" as simply "woman", unconnected with marriage or a husband/wife, is preserved in words such as "midwife", "goodwife", "fishwife" and "spaewife".

After marriage, it is generally expected in many cultures that a woman will take her husband's surname, though this is not universal. A married woman may indicate her marital status in a number of ways: in Western culture, a married woman would commonly wear a wedding ring, but in other cultures, other markers of marital status may be used. A married woman is commonly given the title "Mrs", but some married women prefer to be referred to as "Ms", a title which is also used by preference or when the marital status of a woman is unknown.

A woman on her wedding day is usually described as a bride. Occasionally, this naming is considered appropriate after the wedding ceremony or the honeymoon, though she is typically called a wife within the marriage. If she is marrying a man, her partner is known as the bridegroom during the wedding and within the marriage is called her husband. If she is marrying a woman, each partner is referred to as a wife.

In the older customs, which are still followed by the Roman Catholic ritual, the word bride actually means fiancée, and applies up to the exchange of matrimonial consent (the actual marriage act). From that point, even while the rest of the very ceremony is ongoing, the woman is a wife and no longer considered as a bride. Hence, the bridal couple is no longer referred to as such, but instead as the newlywed couple or "newlyweds".

Unlike mother, a term that puts a woman into the context of her children, "Wife" refers to the institutionalized relation to the other spouse. In some societies, especially historically, a concubine was a woman who was in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented relationship with a man who could not be married to her, often due to a difference in social status.

The term wife is most commonly applied to a woman in a union sanctioned by law (including religious law), but not to a woman in an informal cohabitation relationship, which may be known as a girlfriend, partner, cohabitant, significant other, concubine, mistress, etc. However, a woman in a so-called common law marriage may describe herself as a common law wife, de facto wife, or simply a wife. Those seeking to advance gender neutrality may refer to both marriage partners as "spouses". In response to this naming change, many countries and societies are rewording their statute law by replacing "wife" and "husband" with "spouse". A former wife whose spouse is deceased is a widow.

The status of a wife may be terminated by divorce, annulment, or the death of a spouse. In the case of divorce, terminology such as a former wife, former-wife or ex-wife is often used. In regard to annulment, such terms are not strictly accurate. This is because annulment, unlike divorce, is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning as though it had never taken place. In the case of the death of the other spouse, the term used is widow. The social status of such women varies by culture. In some places, they may be subject to potentially harmful practices, such as widow inheritance or levirate marriage, or social stigmatization. In some cultures, the termination of the status of wife makes life itself meaningless. In the case of those cultures that practice sati, a funeral ritual within some Asian communities, a recently widowed woman intentionally commits suicide by fire, typically upon the husband's funeral pyre.