wedlock
nounUK /ˈwɛd.lɒk/
Etymology From Middle English wedlok, wedlocke (“wedlock, marriage, matrimony”), from Old English wedlāc (“marriage vow, pledge, plighted troth, wedlock”). By surface analysis, wed + -lock.
1
The state of being married.
- If I were about to marry, I should try it; that is, if I were a student of girldom with a view to wedlock for in truth, I am a marrying man.1871, Thomas Meehan, editor, Gardener's monthly and horticulturist:
- Nothing Jesus Christ more quemeth (pleaseth) Than love in wedlock where men it yemeth (keepeth);1906, William Henry Schofield, English Literature:
2
Obsolete A wife; a married woman.
- that lovely payre, / Enlincked fast in wedlockes loyall bond, / Bold Marinell with Florimell the fayre […]1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Which of these is thy Wedlock, Menelaus? thy Hellen? thy Lucrece? that we may do her Honour; mad Boy?1601, Ben Jonson, The Poetaster:
1 more example
- 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.1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce:
- Derived terms
- bedlock, break wedlock, out of wedlock
- Related terms
- bridelock