'The wife'

[Cigent]

As in men referring to their girlfriends as 'the wife'.

I have a friend whose boyfriend does it like of the time - 'date night with the wife', 'being spoiled by the wife', 'the wife's just at the bar'. It drives me crackers. They're not even married!

AIBU? I don't know why it winds me up so much but it really does.

I find it a bit odd that people use “in-laws” for people they are not, in fact, related to by law, which is what the term actually means. Your boyfriend’s mum is not legally linked to you at all, no matter how long you’ve been with him. You can be married ten seconds and you are legally linked. It’s weird to use a term that is just completely factually incorrect. It’s nothing to do with superiority, the law is the law 🤷‍♀️
If you are cohabiting and share kids without lots of additional legal safeguards like wills then you won’t be treated as married if one partner dies. Because you’re … not married.

I think this is because people like the sound of "we're going to the in-laws' for lunch" rather than "we're going to my partner's parents for lunch" more.

There isn't really a short alternative for partner's parents.

For me it would be "I'm going to see my ex-husband's father", which might take people a minute to work out, whereas if I say father-in-law people know exactly who I mean. And the staff at the care home always think I'm his daughter anyway so I might as well say I'm the Queen of England (oh, that's lost its ring).

Not a fan of "the wife" and similar. An attempt at humour that almost always falls flat. I'm not annoyed enough to say anything to anyone else about it, but if DH started with that, I'd put a stop to it. It does seem even more obnoxious when the woman in question isn't even their actual wife.

The kids
the folks (parents)
the guys
the girls (if you have more than one daughter. I do this)
the boys (if you have more than son)

any of those you find unpleasant?

I could go on

the ladies
the gents
the boss

It’s a certain demographic of man that will use this term regularly, and thankfully I am not friends or family with them
but I don’t find it offensive when I hear it

but if I was with a man who used it… I’d be gobsmacked that it had got as far as marriage and then he reveals this side to him!

These are all plural, it's quite different (for some grammatical reason I can't think of!)

DH's friend calls his "the queen" and calls his friends wives "your queen ".
As in "How's your queen?"

Vom🤮🤮🤮

He's horrible.

@LadyEloise1

presumably your dh has told him to not call you that and that he sounds like a twat?

Yes I avoid fiancé like the plague as it just seems to be saying ASK ME ABOUT WEDDING PLANNING.

Well yes, I'd think it exceptionally odd if someone started referring to a couple who weren't his parents as 'the folks'. I take your point though, and no, they don't bother me. 'Wor lass' and 'our Steve' doesn't either. Just 'the wife', 'the hubby', 'er indoors' hahahaha. God it annoys me.

The replacement of possessive nouns with 'the' is a dialectical trait found in Scots and regional English dialects. It goes back to Middle English.

I disagree. Scots do not say “ the wife” and in fact we often add in possessives where English people would not:

“I’m going to my bed” “He’s away to his work” “What do you want for your Christmas?”

I disagree. Scots do not say “ the wife” and in fact we often add in possessives where English people would not:

I think PPs point was that it's still used in some dialects in some areas, not that it's how everyone speaks there now. Still entirely common in some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. I'd be surprised if it wasn't in some areas of southern Scotland given the crossover in dialects over the years.

But it's a dying way of speaking as language homogenises.

@HaveringWavering Scots is a distinct but closely related language to English, derived from Northumbrian Old English when Northumbria stretched approximately between what is now Falkirk, Hull and Liverpool. The area that was Northumbria equates approximately which where this grammatical contraction is found most frequently, both in dialects of the Scots language and in dialects of the English language such as Geordie. Dialectical differences in sentence construction and vocabulary are not considered to be incorrect just because they do not conform to the same standards as Received Pronunciation.

I know what Scots is. I was born and bred in Scotland and force fed Burns poetry as a child, including winning prizes for performing it.

Can you give me some examples of where it contains grammatical constructions similar to "the wife"?

My point was that this construction is not used in modern Scottish local dialect and in fact we do the opposite, we add extra possessives. So if this construction does indeed exist in Scots it has not carried over to modem Scottish speech.

"Dialectical differences in sentence construction and vocabulary are not considered to be incorrect just because they do not conform to the same standards as Received Pronunciation."

Where on earth did I suggest that dialects are "incorrect", or suggest that only RP is correct?

Have you copied and pasted some sort of standard response to idiots in error?