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alewife.

A woman who keeps an alehouse.

7 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈeɪlwʌɪf/UK/ˈeɪlˌwaɪf/US
  1. A woman who keeps an alehouse.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From ale + wife.

noun/ˈeɪlwʌɪf/UK/ˈeɪlˌwaɪf/US
  1. A migrating North American fish, Alosa pseudoharengus.

  2. Any of several species similar in appearance.

Where this word comes from

Unknown. Possibly from aloof, the Narragansett name of a fish. See Winthrop on the culture of maize in America, “Phil Trans.” No. 142, p. 1065, and Baddam’s “Memoirs,” vol. ii. p. 131. Possibly from allowes (“a type of shad”), from French alose (“shad”), from Old French [Term?], from Late Latin alausa, influenced by Etymology 1 due to large belly of the fish.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.