wedlock

English

Etymology

From Middle English wedlok, wedlocke (“wedlock, marriage, matrimony”), from Old English wedlāc (“marriage vow, pledge, plighted troth, wedlock”). By surface analysis, wed +‎ -lock.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛd.lɒk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒk

Noun

wedlock (countable and uncountable, plural wedlocks)

1. The state of being married.

   Synonyms: matrimony, marriage

   • 1871, Thomas Meehan, editor, Gardener's monthly and horticulturist:

     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.

   • 1906, William Henry Schofield, English Literature:

     Nothing Jesus Christ more quemeth (pleaseth) Than love in wedlock where men it yemeth (keepeth);

2. (obsolete) A wife; a married woman.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     that lovely payre, / Enlincked fast in wedlockes loyall bond, / Bold Marinell with Florimell the fayre […]

   • 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

• bedlock
• break wedlock
• out of wedlock

Related terms

• bridelock

Translations

state of being married — see marriage,‎ matrimony

married woman — see wife