unwive

English

Etymology

un- +‎ wive

Verb

unwive (third-person singular simple present unwives, present participle unwiving, simple past and past participle unwived)

1. (transitive, archaic) To divest of a wife; to divorce (someone) from his wife.
2. (transitive, archaic) To cause (a woman) no longer to be a wife.
   • 1913 August, Constance Skinner, “Give Hand and Follow”, in Ainslee’s Magazine, volume 32, number 1, page 74:

     State law was not needed to unwive her. She had never been a wife. She had experienced nothing, given nothing. She had mocked passion with barter, and starved love with selfishness.

   • 1936, William Faulkner, chapter 5, in Absalom, Absalom!, New York: Vintage, published 1990:

     […] that bedroom long-closed and musty, that sheetless bed (that nuptial couch of love and grief) with the pale and bloody corpse in its patched and weathered gray crimsoning the bare mattress, the bowed and unwived widow kneeling beside it […]