yokefellow

English

Alternative forms

• yoke-fellow, yoke fellow

Etymology

From yoke +‎ fellow.

Noun

yokefellow (plural yokefellows)

1. A companion; a fellow labourer, a person who works at the same task as another. [from 16th c.]
   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene vi]:

     I’ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence. / [To Edgar] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place. / [To the Fool] And thou, his yokefellow of equity, / Bench by his side.

   • 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 7, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC:

     “ […] If two people like each other, why shouldn’t they consent to live together?” / “They tire of each other—they tire of each other in a month. A yokefellow is not a companion; he or she is a fellow-sufferer.”

   • 1922, James Ezra Darby, Jesus, an economic mediator: God's remedy for industrial and international ills:

     Brain and hand, and means and muscle, are true yokefellows in modern industrialism. Without the inventor, there could be no machinery...

   • 1999, David E Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel:

     Jesus treats his disciples as yokefellows rather than as camels and donkeys to be loaded down (23:4).

2. (now rare, historical) Someone joined in marriage to another; a spouse. [from 16th c.]
   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     [H]is industrious yoke-fellow executed every circumstance of the plan she had projected; so that, when he recovered his vision, he was an utter stranger in his own house.

   • 1882, Edward Augustus Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First:

     ...till new grounds of quarrel had arisen between the two unequal yokefellows who were at last fully coupled together.