For my wife Rita.

English has lacked a one-syllable word meaning ‘woman’ since ‘wif’ became ‘wife’. Aside from being unjust, this is a poetic nuisance.

I considered reintroducing ‘wif’, in its original meaning, but it is too phonetically close to ‘wife’ to achieve clear semantic separation. Beyond that, the rhymes arising from ‘wif’ are not generally appealing. For instance, “For in a tiff that sordid wif,” whilst some may think it occasionally accurate, is not a sentiment to be granted linguistic support.

So I offer instead the new word ‘wove’, which, in addition providing a one-syllable version of ‘woman’, matching the efficiency of ‘man’, gives an important new rhyme for ‘love’, of which we have too few. As a mixed blessing, it further supports expressions such as “My heart, my wove, my turtledove.” For as with birds, human males need rhythms for their courtship songs, whether a bit silly or not.

Odd? Certainly. Everything interesting starts as odd.