Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Without a wife; unmarried.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Without a wife; unmarried.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective having no wife; unmarried or celibate

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

wife +‎ -less

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Examples

  • When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking beans and keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with swapping their warm furs for black bottles and broken timepieces, he took to his bed, said "bless me" several times, and departed to his final accounting in a rough-hewn, oblong box.

    BÂTARD 2010

  • For a second I thought I'd guessed wrong about Mullin being wifeless, for this was surely the woman in the group photo, Margaret's mother.

    The Devil's Bedpost 2010

  • Later that night, looking out the window, I saw Ed slide out the back door, look around twice, hide his cane behind the potted flowers then spread his arms to slowly rise and fly into the moon-lit clouds for a little wifeless while.

    Enemy Camp 2010

  • Also ahead tonight, the stars speak out -- Bette Midler's affectionate fare well, also ex-wifeless Lisa Marie Presley's stunning revelation, what Michael Jackson told her years ago, a chilling prediction of a day like this to come.

    CNN Transcript Jun 26, 2009 2009

  • I wish I were a wretched pauper of the lowest class — a starving vagabond — a wifeless mother — ignorance and insensibility would make me bear my lot like the outcast animal that dies patiently on the side of the common, where it has been half-starved during its life.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • The Peapack, N. J., couple recently decided to donate the book to the State Historical Society in North Dakota, where Dalley settled and lived out his wifeless days.

    Diary of a Confirmed Bachelor 2006

  • But the sickness of children, bridal-beds ravished by Death-dreadful! when we might be wifeless and childless to the end.

    Alcestis 2007

  • But the sickness of children, bridal-beds ravished by Death-dreadful! when we might be wifeless and childless to the end.

    Alcestis 2007

  • Irving could only live very modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a father.

    Roundabout Papers 2006

  • I am wifeless — childless — who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life?

    When the Sleeper Wakes 2006

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