wifed

1. 1
   verbcolloquial

   Simple past and past participle of wife. Colloquial.

   After years together, he finally wifed her in a quiet church.

   Her friends were shocked when he wifed her after only a few months.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is colloquial. To wife someone is to marry her, with the woman as the object: he wifed her, or in the passive, she was wifed. That casual register comes along with the form, so it suits speech and informal writing better than a wedding announcement. It is spelled exactly like the "having a wife" adjective.

2. 2
   adjectiverarein compounds

   Married to a wife, or having the stated number of wives.

   At last he was a wifed man, with someone waiting for him at home.

   “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], All the Living

   Similarmarried, wedded

   Oppositeunmarried, single

   Note

   Built from the noun, with -ed meaning "having," as in bearded or one-eyed. It lives mostly in compounds such as one-wifed and many-wifed. Fanny Stenhouse (1874) and Kate Foote (1888) both use it when writing about plural marriage, where the number of wives was the point. Standing alone, as in Henrietta Buckmaster's "Thou wifed man" (1962), it is rarer. It names a state, unlike the verb's past form, which names the act of marrying.

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