Dear Rouspeteur: I looked for "antonym distaff" and got this feeble jest:
What is the opposite of "distaff side"?
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"Spear side", but I prefer Truly Donovan's suggestion, "datstaff side". :-)
Series"On the Spear Side and on the Distaff Side" with very popular family a humorous features is prepared in a co-operation with Czech Television. The series is designed to 7 parts /50 minutes a part/. We are considering also the possibility of editing it to a night movie. The shooting is planned to 1999. The author of the screenplay is Czech renowned scriptwriter Ivo Pelant and a participation of the best Czech film workers and actors is expected. More details about the prepared series including digest short version will be sent to al1 the interested persons.
Wife
is from the verb to weave. (Saxon wefan, Danish vœve, German weben, whence weib, a woman,
one who works at the distaff.) Woman is called the distaff. Hence Dryden calls Anne “a distaff on
the throne.” While a girl was spinning her wedding clothes she was simply a spinster; but when this
task was done, and she was married, she became a wife, or one who had already woven her
allotted task.
1
Alfred, in his will, speaks of his male and female descendants as those of the spear-side and
those of the spindle-side, a distinction still observed by the Germans; and hence the effigies on
graves of spears and spindles.
2
(from Bartleby)
