“The wife”

by Edward O’Connor on 16 December 2006

Lately I’ve noticed that I don’t like it when in conversation men refer to their wives as “the wife” instead of, say, “my wife,” or — gasp — her name. Consider:

  1. I don’t think the wife will go for that.
  2. I don’t think Erin'll go for that.

To me, it sounds like the speaker in the first statement believes that his wife’s objections are illegitimate, whereas statement 2 carries no such implication in my ears.

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Copyright © 2006 Edward O’Connor. Some rights reserved (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Comments

  1. i've been forced to adjust my usage of the term in just such a fashion at the request of a friend. his wife also finds it derogatory, and while such was not my intention i'm more than willing to quit using it.

    — stephen o'grady, 16 December 2006

  2. I concur. “The wife” seems to objectify her, or at least distance himself inappropriately from her.

    — Kent Steven Rosenkoetter, 17 December 2006

  3. Neither statement carries any such implication to my ears. But, as an admirer of eccentricity, I salute you for cultivating a non-rational preference.

    — Bill, 17 December 2006

  4. I completely agree with your assessment of "the" versus "my".

    However, I also believe that the use of titles is appropriate when a joint decision is needed on something, and that title is the most applicable description of the situation. That title could be their name when discussing their personal feelings, like "Erin" would like this joke, or "my wife" when accepting an invitation to a party, or "Checking with 'The Other Parental Unit'" when discussing their children's activities, etc, etc, etc...

    There are of course exceptions to this. At work the one that really bothers me is "Getting clearance from 'The Control Tower'". While it may be an accurate description of their personal situation, it bothers me that such a relationship exists.

    — Scott Tomlinson, 19 December 2006

  5. I was actually quite amused when one of my co-workers referred to asking his wife something as getting permission from “the home minister”. Apparently that was his pet name for his wife, referencing the fact that he worked and provided, and ceeded all authority on domestic matters to her.

    (It was all quite mutual and all that. He was just a very funny, short, friendly, and inoffensive young Indian man in a healthy arranged marriage. Scott just reminded me of it.)

    — Kent Rosenkoetter, 19 December 2006

  6. The message that I think I would take away from this could be rephrased as, or at least has undertones of "I would enjoy having a beer with you but in this particular instance my wife would probably be unhappy if I did so (unreasonably, in my estimation)".

    — Ashton, 11 June 2007

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