wifed en · ADJ · etymology 1
Etymology
From wife (noun) + -ed (“having”).
Meanings
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(in-compounds, not-comparable, often, rare) Having a wife or the specified number of wives.
If a man of many wives starts with as much love for his first wife as ordinary one-wifed men have for theirs, and goes on increasing his love with each additional wife, so that he can always say to the last that “he never really loved before;” how much love will he have when he gets to the tenth or the twentieth?
1874, Mrs. T[homas] B[rown] H[olmes] Stenhouse [i.e., Fanny Stenhouse], “‘Our’ Husband’s Fiancée—A Second Wife’s Sorrows—Steps towards Apostacy”, in “Tell It All”: The Story of a Life’s Experience in Mormonism. […], Hartford, Con.: A. D. Worthington & Co. […], →OCLC, page 538:“You smile and mock me,” she said, “as if I meant naughtily.” “Do you not?” She said with sudden gaiety, “Thou wifed man—I’ll unsmock thee.”
1962, Henrietta Buckmaster [pseudonym; Henrietta Delancey Henkle], chapter 9, in All the Living: A Novel of One Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, published 1963, →OCLC, book 2, page 412:It was whispered about on Tuesday morning that we were to have a Mormon woman as a speaker, and so it proved—Mrs. Emily S[ophia] Richards, delegate from the Women’s Association of that territory. “Her bonnet would strike terror to a many-wifed man,” was the whispered comment of some one in the audience; […]
1888 April 5, Kate Foote, “Our Washington Letter”, in The Independent, volume XL, number 2053, New York, N.Y.: The Independent Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6 (422), column 4: