do you marry your husband?I think not but fear this is taking pedantry to new levels.

[hatwoman]

"She married her husband." Surely this is wrong? But I think I have to let it go, don't I...sigh.

Ah, yes, Vivelafrak (apologies for gender confusion), am with you now.

Going to look up 'wedlock' and 'midriff' now ... do we think they are compound nouns?

Now that I did not know....

Oooooooooooh, look ... there it is.

hrif.

How are you pronouncing that, then?

Nice bit of etymology there, midnight. Ta.

My pleasure. Now, I really must go and entertain my screaming DCs.

Well wedlock is the nominalisation of the verb to wed and I think it takes the Old English suffix 'lac' which became lock. But I might be misremembering.

midhrife - first citation is c1000. So the award for the most archaic reference clearly goes to midnightexpress, unless we have an early mention of wedlock coming up ...

Entertain them with etymology games....

Or on second thoughts don't as they might turn out like me. I was a pest on long car journeys and needed entertaining with spelling tests and guessing the origins of words.

finds 'wedgy' and sniggers a moment

Do share! Quickly as I need to go to the gym for class.

Yup, the 'lac' is the suffix forming nouns of action.

1100. So close.

notwithstanding SPB's fantastic efforts, and my own misgivings about the mother example not being the same I have decided I was wrong. I was thinking that "mother" couldn't be parallel becaase the husband scenario is about you interacting with them - and, by definition, (unless you believe in reincarnation) there's no parallel situation in which you interact with your mother before she was your mother (with me?)...so... I tried to come up with a different example - and came up with neighbour. It's perfectly ok, I believe, to say "I met my neighbour at morris dancing classes, before she moved next door." So, I think I've decided it's ok to marry your husband. phew.

I think it's 95% ok.

Something niggles in me when I hear it, despite my previous defence.

"I met my neighbour at morris dancing classes, before she moved next door."

No that has the same problem in my mind as the marrying the husband one...

I agree SPB, I'd probably say 'I met a woman at morris dancing classes and then she became my neighbour' for that reason. No?

But wouldn't you be discussing her from the point of view of her being your neighbour? It seems unnecessarily ... narrative? to be so specific. Like you are drawing out the suspense of your exciting relationship with her.

I'd be more concerned re the secret Morris dancing community springing up, tbh.

ACtually, I would assume you were implying she had purposely selected to be your neighbour i.e. had developed an obsession with you and was following you around.

I would say, "I met my neighbour, Betty, before we even lived next door to each other."

I'd get rid of the confusing neighbour references as soon as I could.

I am saying this from within my imaginary world in which I am correct and concise at all times. And in which I have conversations with people in real life.

It's find to say the neighbour phrase but for a different reason. You're ellipting a 'that was' between class and before.

When would you say 'I married my husband' without a circumstance - either when or where or how....

ooh yes that's it VLF

You woulnd't say "My neighbour lives in New Zealand"

Meaning "The woman-that-was-my-neighbour"

But you wouldn'y say that about a husband if he was no longer your spouse, would you?

'Neighbour' implies proximity in the same way 'husband' implies an existing state of marriage.

Well, perhaps.

Well, I have used the phrase
'I married your daddy!'
in response to the question of one of my daughters, on seeing a photo of me in a wedding dress,
'Who did you marry, mummy?'

I suppose that I could have used the phrase 'I married my husband' as a response without a circumstance.

I would say that my old next-door neighbour lives in New Zealand. Even if she is only 24.

This is my favourite pedantry thread ever- I'm gutted that I missed it!

Ah you see the poledra you are using 'my husband' as a response to who and describing an relational process where you don't say 'x who is my husband'. You take a grammatical shortcut.