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wedlock. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
wedlock, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
wedlock in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
wedlock you have here. The definition of the word
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wedlock, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
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
Noun
wedlock (countable and uncountable, plural wedlocks)
- The state of being married.
- Synonyms: matrimony, marriage
- (obsolete) A wife; a married woman.
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.
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