prison wife
1
9.1
- noun
- /ˈprɪzən waɪf/
:
esposa de un preso
- She joined a support group for prison wives to help her cope.
Examples
-
Many prison wives face emotional and financial challenges while their partners are incarcerated.
-
Becoming a prison wife changed her life in unexpected ways.
-
She is a devoted prison wife.
-
Many prison wives face unique challenges.
-
As a prison wife, she struggled with loneliness while her husband was incarcerated.
-
Many prison wives find it challenging to maintain a relationship during their spouse's long sentences.
-
She often visited her husband in jail, proudly identifying herself as a prison wife.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'prison' (relating to incarceration) with 'wife' (a married woman), yielding a wife associated with someone in prison. This straightforward noun–noun compounding follows common English patterns (and similar constructions in other languages), so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
The term prison wife comes from the simple image of a wife whose husband is behind bars in prison. So prison wife means 'a woman whose spouse is serving a prison sentence'.