A woman from Cape Cod is looking for a polite word that means the current wife of my ex-husband. She’s thinking about cur-wife, but somehow that doesn’t quite work. Neither does the phrase “that poor woman.” The hosts try to help her come up with other possibilities. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Current Wife”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Betsy from Cape Cod.
Well, what’s going on, Betsy?
Well, we’re looking for the polite word for the current spouse of your ex-spouse.
So your ex-husband has a new spouse. Are you on good terms with them?
Not necessarily.
Oh, okay, all right.
I’m looking for a polite word because, I mean, at some point I might be somebody else’s this.
Right.
Good point.
Right, right, right.
So what have you come up with so far?
Well, one of my friends came up with curwife because it’s the current wife, but it also sort of, unfortunately, I felt that it kept the other word in there, the cur.
C-U-R-W-I-F-E.
Okay.
And the other one we found out, but again, it was, again, that’s a female thing, and then another female thing that I came up with was ex-ux.
That’s what it was, ex-ux.
E-X.
Because in all the legal stuff, I was always the ux.
Right.
For the Latin for wife.
Right, uxor.
Right, okay.
So E-X-U-X.
Yes.
Well, that’s kind of nifty.
That’s nice.
It might be difficult to spread, though, because it’s going to require you explain it every single time that you say it.
And I’m having enough trouble explaining the relationship the first time around.
I don’t want to have to be explaining it.
I want a word that I can just say when I have to refer to this person, or if I was on the other side when somebody had to refer to me, this is what you call them.
Is your relationship with your ex-husband such that you could call his new wife that poor woman?
Again, somebody would think that I was being derogatory, and I don’t want to sort of put that out there.
You don’t want to be mean to your ex-husband or his new wife, right?
Right. I’m trying to be, you know, I’m distantly related through marriage to Emily Post, and I’m trying to get this right.
There we go.
Generosity of spirit.
I like that.
What about like they do for Voldemort in the Harry Potter books and movies, call her you-know-who?
Again, it’s sort of derogatory, though.
Well, that’s the fun side of it.
You can’t say that.
I’ve got to tell you, then, I’m stumped, because it brings out the kind of sharpest desire to be just a little mean, doesn’t it?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, but Betsy’s point is that it could come back to bite her.
Sure, sure.
I could do that person one day.
Right, you could.
Not with my ex-husband, but with somebody else’s ex-husband.
Wow.
Well, you know, Grant will be the first person to tell you it’s really, really, really hard to coin a word and get it into the English language.
But I’m starting to think that, you know, English doesn’t have an academy like the French, but I’m thinking we need a language academy of the air here just to designate words.
Because there are all kinds of words like that that don’t exist yet for those kinds of relationships.
I think we just need to decide arbitrarily and spread it.
I would agree with that.
But let’s just agree.
I think Betsy already said this, that Kerwife doesn’t work because it has C-U-R, which is a name for a dog in it, right?
Right.
I kind of like it.
X-U-X is pretty good.
It’s kind of awkward to say, but let’s go ahead and put that number one on our list.
And then I think we need to turn on the sirens, Martha, and get the flashing lights going and have the new word special and solicit requests from our listeners.
What do you say to that, Betsy?
What do you call, what’s a one-word, short, easy-to-understand way to refer to your ex-husband’s new wife?
I don’t know.
I don’t know what that answer is.
Yeah, but Betsy’s having an emergency.
I think the word here is the polite word.
Polite.
The polite word.
Okay.
Because everybody’s been able to come up with the impolite ones.
Right.
You can call us 1-877-929-9673 or email us to words@waywordradio.org.
Betsy, I want to thank you so much for calling us today.
Yeah, help’s on the way.
Don’t worry.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Best of luck.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Oh, the coining one is always tough, Martha, because you can come up with something that you think is the cleverest thing in the world and everyone else will go, eh, sorry.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So call us, 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email with your suggestion for what to call the spouse of your ex.
A polite term.
It has to be polite or it will be disqualified.
And you can send that to words@waywordradio.org.
