wife

an acceptable word in itself (from a Germanic term meaning "female human being"), "wife" is sometimes used gratuitously or in highly sexist ways. An effective test is to see if you would use "husband" in a similar way. Casey Miller and Kate Swift (The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing) point out that in the traditional marriage service provided in the Book of Common Prayer, the couple was initially referred to as "the Man and the Woman"; it was not until the words of marriage were pronounced that they were referred to henceforth as "Man and Wife"; "Symbolically, two have been made one, but also symbolically the man's status as a person remains intact whereas the woman's is changed from person to role." This language is history now in many churches, but we have inherited much of its spirit in the use of "wife" today. When Esquire offered its readers a special tear-out section entitled "Your Wife: An Owner's Manual," editor-in-chief Lee Eisenberg introduced it: "We are gathered together in the sight of our readers to come to grips with the subject of a man's wife, his partner, the little woman, the missus...." The issue included a list of "synonyms" for "wife," some of which were positive or neutral and some, acknowledged as offensive, that illustrated what some men and some husbands think of wives: bitch, hussy, old lady, the gadget, Darth Vader, the hag, the nag, the rag, the bag, the spandex monster, my little piranha fish, the war department, twitface, the mouse queen, Evita, the terminator, the queen, the princess, Her Majesty, the boss, the worse half, exec-u-wife, the fishwife, the shrew, the mouth, the ballbuster, the creature, squaw, the powers that be, the ball and chain. See also farm wife/farmer's wife, husband (n.), husband and wife, owner, working mother/working wife/working woman.