seawife

English edit

Etymology edit

From sea +‎ wife.

Pronunciation edit

(UK) IPA^(key): /siːˌwaɪf/

Noun edit

seawife (plural seawives)

Synonym of wrasse.
(rare) The wife of a fisherman or sailor.
- 1972, W[illiam] Towrie Cutt, Seven for the Sea, London: André Deutsch, →ISBN, front flap:
  Moreover they are informed that the only Ward family living on the island is “Selkie” and his seawife, and “Selkie” was their great-great-grandfather, dead for a hundred years. / Eventually, after encounters with various people whose behaviour they cannot understand, they find “Selkie”, his seawife and their seven children. […] The seawife legend, versions of which are still told in the Orkneys and elsewhere, haunts this tale of the Ward boys on their Johnsmass eve journey home.
- 1978, George Sibley, Part of a Winter: A Memory More Like a Dream, New York, N.Y.: Harmony Books, →ISBN, page 212:
  As each contraction built, swelled, broke, and subsided, I had begun to feel like an old seawife on the shore listening to the boom and smack of waves rolling in from an offshore storm, knowing (from the tales of survivors) what was happening out there to the old man on the boat, but unable to do a thing about it. One holding a light against the beating darkness, knowing only for sure that at some point this violence rolling and breaking beyond and beneath would yield up—well, would yield up something: in the seawife’s case, maybe this time the mute tangle of rope and wood, a broken pot, something facedown and smashed, but with the normal combination of luck and skill—hadn’t this happened many times before?—once more the boat and the old man who would require no more than a hand at the last moment, a rope caught, the boat secured and then home for supper…yes, I felt like that old seawife that night.
- 1983, Jimmy Cornell, “The Seawives Have Their Say”, in Modern Ocean Cruising: Boats, Gear and Crews Surveyed, London: Adlard Coles Limited, →ISBN, page 119:
  Out of the total of fifty boats surveyed on practical aspects of seamanship and long distance cruising, forty had a seawife on board. I use the term ‘seawife’ loosely, as the forty ladies concerned included not only wives, but also girlfriends, mothers and independent women cruising on their own terms. […] Wherever possible I tried to talk to the seawives on their own, but when this was not possible, I firmly asked their skipper not to interfere.
- 1991, Joyce G. Knibb, Patricia A. Mehrtens, The Elusive Booths of Burrillville: An Investigation of John Wilkes Booth’s Alleged Wife and Daughter, Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, Inc., →ISBN, page 158:
  She was not the model New England seawife who walked the widow's walk atop her house waiting for the return of her sailor.
- 1994, Robin Jarvis, “The Horngarth”, in The Whitby Child (Whitby; 3), Hemel Hempstead, Herts.: Macdonald Young Books, published 1995, →ISBN, pages 129–130:
  From the middle of the insistent fisherfolk, Maudlin Trowker, a seawife who had arrayed Nelda for the Briding, stepped up to her and put a tender hand upon her shoulder.
- 1997, David Kasanof, From the Fo’c’s’le, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Sheridan House, →ISBN, pages 13, 20, 26, 32, and 39:
  My good seawife, Nancy, already has a stock expression for the phenomenon. […] I yelled down to my gentle seawife that I’d have to harden up or even luff up to let a privileged boat by. […] Your good seawife hands you a mug filled with the source of this lovely aroma. […] My good seawife and I don’t feel that way when we’re aboard; we feel that way when we re-enter the world of normal, right-thinking, sensible people. […] Ten years ago, my good seawife and I voluntarily moved from an 11-room farmhouse into an old wooden hulk, and we had never been convicted of anything more serious than virulent romanticism.
- 2005, Kate Brallier, Seal Island, New York, N.Y.: Tor Romance, →ISBN, page 241:
  I smiled into the wind. The rain had lessened—and was that actually sun on the horizon, leaching through the thinning clouds in an electric streak? I pulled my head in, my face beaded with spray, and Tom laughed at me again, his dark eyes sparkling. And this time he did reach out to brush the dampness off my cheeks with fingers that were both cool and searingly hot all at once. / “You look like a seawife,” he teased, his voice low and intimate, barely audible above the roar of the engine.
- 2011, Katherine Langrish, West of the Moon, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 182:
  “Did Grandfather never tell you that story? It’s a sailor’s yarn. The old seawife, Ran, sits in her kitchen at the bottom of the sea, brewing up storms in her big black pot. Oh, yes! All the drowned sailors go down to sit in rows on the benches in Ran’s kitchen!”