How to spell wives

hear it/waɪvz/nounLong vowels

What it means: Married women.

In a sentence: The wives baked cookies for the party.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as wifes or wievs.

Same family: husband, marriage, married, spouse, widow. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Wives is the irregular plural of wife, following the old English pattern that changes f to v before adding -es. This same f → v + es change appears in other common words like 'knife → knives' and 'leaf → leaves'.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · Drop the e before a suffix?

Try spelling it

You will hear the word and a sentence. Type it and press Enter. Then four more words from the same level, so you know where you stand.

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