uxorious
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of uxorious
1590–1600; < Latin ūxōrius, equivalent to ūxor wife + -ius -ious
Explanation
A man who dotes on or really adores his wife is uxorious. Your uxorious grandfather, for example, might plan your grandmother's surprise birthday party months in advance. Uxorious goes back to the Latin root ūxor, "wife," and it came into English in the 16th century. Uxorious is usually negative, a way to show that a husband has too much concern for his wife or is submissive to her desires. It's also an increasingly dated, old fashioned word, as a husband is considered uxorious if he lets his wife "control" him. There's no corresponding adjective you can use of a wife "controlled" by her husband.
Vocabulary lists containing uxorious
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Paradise Lost
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Pandaram, meanwhile, is an uxorious family man struggling to marry off a spoiled daughter, and the story turns on the scams and deceptions he faces in arranging her future.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 8, 2026
They married in 1991 and became probably the most devotedly uxorious Hollywood couple since Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.
From The Guardian • Jul. 13, 2020
He’s an uxorious husband, dewy, Lapinsky a constant in conversation.
From Washington Post • Feb. 28, 2020
Nabokov’s uxorious complacence reaches its low point in the spring of 1937, the “darkest and most painful” year of the marriage, as Boyd puts it.
From The New Yorker • Nov. 16, 2015
He felt a flush of achievement, at how easily fiancée had slipped out of him, a sign of future uxorious bliss.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
