wedlock

plural wedlocks

1. countableuncountableThe state of being married.

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

   1906, William Henry Schofield, English Literature

   1 more example

   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

   Synonyms: matrimony, marriage

2. countableobsoleteuncountableA wife; a married woman.

   Which of these is thy Wedlock, Menelaus? thy Hellen? thy Lucrece? that we may do her Honour; mad Boy?

   1601, Ben Jonson, The Poetaster

   2 more examples

   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

   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