wifeless

alternative wiveless · alternative wyueles

1. not comparableHaving no wife; unmarried or celibate.

   I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I have no part. I am wifeless—childless—who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life?

   1899 January 7 – May 5, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter I, in When the Sleeper Wakes, London; New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, published 1899, →OCLC

2. not comparableWithout a wife present.

   I at once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to cook for them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some wifeless day.

   1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire