wedlock
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English wedlok, wedlocke (“wedlock, marriage, matrimony”), from Old English wedlāc (“marriage vow, pledge, plighted troth, wedlock”); synchronically analyzable as wed + -lock.
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈwɛd.lɒk/
- Rhymes: -ɒk
Noun[edit]
wedlock (countable and uncountable, plural wedlocks)
- The state of being married.
- (obsolete) A wife; a married woman.
- 1601, Ben Jonson, The Poetaster:
- Which of these is thy Wedlock, Menelaus? thy Hellen? thy Lucrece? that we may do her Honour; mad Boy?
- 1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce:
- What is it then but that desire which God put into Adam in Paradise before he knew the sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not good that man should be left alone to burn in; the desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitarines by uniting another body, but not without a fit soule to his in the cheerfull society of wedlock.
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
married woman — see wife
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms suffixed with -lock
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɒk
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English terms with quotations
- en:Family
- en:Marriage