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9 wordies list
husband |
(n): a married man; a woman's partner in marriage
(n): a person's partner in marriage
(v): use cautiously and frugally
(v): to keep up and reserve for personal or special use
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Aha! No doubt sweetmeat will prove to have started life as a playful alternative to helpmeet, and from there it's just a hop, skip and jump to sweetbreads. Told you so.
Thanks, sionnach!
Asativum:
Helpmate is indeed related to helpmeet, as the following etymology shows:
"companion," 1715, a ghost word, altered from helpmeet, from the Biblical translation of L. adjutorium simile sibi (Gen. ii.18) as "an help meet (i.e. fit) for him" (Heb. 'ezer keneghdo), which was already by 1673 being printed as help-meet and mistaken for one word.
Getting from helpmate to sweetbread requires not one, but two, knight's moves. Another example of why I love wordie-members so much.
Pterodactyl:
Don't forget that another rhyme for 'wife' is its Cockney slang version 'trouble and strife'.
How about "The Man of the House". That has a ring to it.
I actually like hubby - it's familiar, casual & warm. Has a sense of sweet possessiveness to it - he's my hubby.
Helpmate sounds like helpmeet, which sounds like sweetmeat, which always makes me think of sweetbreads. Blech. I mean, sweetbreads are tasty, cooked right, but not very husbandly. To me.
OK. Sorry. Back to your thread.
Ouch, ouch!
Do you realise that if you have a biblical helpmate you can never have children the normal way? You have to begat instead.
I defer to sionnach; "helpmate" IS better. And I like the biblical tone it lends.
How about 'helpmate'? 'Lover' conjures up images of perpetually mortified children, not to mention jacuzzi scenes on Saturday Night Live.
In my opinion, "hubby" is no good. I would never call my husband that. It's like him calling me his "gal". We prefer "lover".
I sort of like hubby, actually. I think it's sweet.
"Hubby" should be banned; I agree.
I'd probably marry the next woman who promised not to call me hubby in this or the subsequent thousand lifetimes.
Continuing the conversation that has, bewilderingly, popped up over on pterodactyl on the rise...
I really don't like the word husband. It sounds like a Dr. Seuss character.
As Yertle looked out over lands never seen,
He saw thousands of Huzz-Buns, all mottled and green
Wife, by contrast, is airy and pleasant, rather like fife or life. Why couldn't we menfolk have come up with an equally pleasant term for our own married state?