a. Forms: 6 wyuysh, -ish, 7 wiuish, wivish, 8– wifish, (9 erron. wifeish). [f. WIFE sb. + -ISH1. Earlier wivish; cf. thievish from thief.]

1

  † 1.  Belonging to or characteristic of a woman; womanly; in depreciatory sense, womanish. Obs.

2

1535.  Coverdale, 2 Macc. vii. 21. She exorted … them … boldly and stedfastly,… wakynge vp hir wyuysh thought with a manly stomacke. Ibid. (1560[?]), Treat. Death, III. v. 264. To wayte stil till heauinesse forget itselfe, is a wyuish thinge:… to brydle it by times, beseemeth the … sobernesse of a man.

3

  2.  Belonging to or characteristic of, or having the character of, a wife. (Usually in more or less depreciatory sense: see -ISH1 2.) † In quot. 1616, Too devoted or submissive to one’s wife.

4

1616.  T. Scott, Christs Pol., 17. The Prophet would not haue any wise man to be so wiuish, and so wedded to the loue of his wife.

5

1664.  N. B., St. Athanasius, 213. [She] by her wivish and womanish solicitations … hampered Valentinian.

6

1773.  in Early Diary Fr. Burney (1889), I. 192. We used to wonder at Hetty’s being so wifish.

7

1797.  in C. K. Paul, W. Godwin (1876), I. 245. With a true wifish submission to your judgment.

8

1895.  Meredith, Amazing Marr., xxvii. The mother’s wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested in a furnace.

9