Husband And/or Wife?

[TheBaBas]

The story in the attached link is just utterly absurd, isn't it?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10147246/Men-can-be-wives-and-women-husbands-as-Government-overrules-the-dictionary.html

Does this mean that Mrs TheBaBas is now my husband? Actually, despite 15 years together, we aren't married, and therefore is she now my boyfriend? (my tongue is firmly wedged in my cheek!).

[sandyRoe]

Surely, as you been together for 15 years, she'd be classed as your common-law husband?

[factor-fiction]

Isn't the term 'live-in lover' used anymore then? In my younger days it was called 'living over the brush'- although I was never sure why- or 'living in sin' which now seems a dreadful thing to say

[jake-the-peg]

What is absurd is the idea that it is possible to 'override' the dictionary.

The OED does not define how words must be used

It documents how words are used

Now the Telegraph knows this of course they're just playing to the prejudices of it's readers.

A 'cornflake spitter' Telegraph style!

[factor-fiction]

I agree with jake-the peg's interpretation of this.

[sandyRoe]

Disgusted of Tumbridge Wells will be reaching for their green-inked pen even as we speak.

[Cloverjo]

SandyRoe, I believe there is no such thing, legally, as a "common-law" husband or wife.

[jomifl]

Tumbridge Wells? is that in Irelamd?

[Octavius]

Mo, its in Kemt.

[sandyRoe]

Please excuse the typo. The M+N sometimes seem too close together.

[Gromit]

Can't tell if this is right wing nonsense at work over the gay marriage bill, or the officials really have tied themselves in knots teying to define terms.

Partner 1 and Partner 2 on forms would make sense.

[maggiebee]

Went to a talk by author Val McDermid. When she spoke of her partner she referred to her as "my wife". Sounded very strange!

[grasscarp]

Really a stop the world - I want to get off moment.

[emmie]

my friend wouldn't call her partner her husband, she calls her life partner,

[sir.prize]

This is the piece I like . . . critics described it as the vocabulary of “cloud cuckoo land”.

[Octavius]

My Partner 2 would be quite unhappy at being anything other than what she likes to be called.

[paddywak]

Trish usually calls me "that bloody layabout" if she's in a good mood that is. I'd be banned if I posted some of the things I get called.

[jim360]

The idea that you should stop this law passing through because people were bound to get tongue-tied over vocabulary is absurd. This was always going to happen -- the "Coalition for Marriage" is clutching at straws. Language is flexible, and. Still, there were always going to be legal headaches like this -- huge sections of marriage law will have to change, or be clarified, to accommodate the new relationships that are to be legally recognised.

[maggiebee]

Instead of trying to "invent" a new language, I'm sure there are hundreds of words in the English language to describe them.

[themorrigan]

Factor, just a bit of info here may be useful in a quiz :-) The phrase 'Living over the brush' comes from the fact a Heathen (non-christian) wedding would involve the man and woman jumping over a broom or brush. Therefore anyone who was living as man and wife but not married in a Christian church were said to be living over the brush.

[factor-fiction]

Thanks, themorrigan.