On the Devil’s Advocate side: “Wife” just rolls off the tongue in a way “husband” doesn’t. That’s why we have “wife guys” and “my wife!” jokes, but no memes that do much with the word “husband”. (Sometimes we substitute the one-syllable word “man”, as in “it’s raining men” or “get you a man who can do both”.)
You could also parse “wife years” as “years of being a wife” from the female perspective, though of course this still fails to incorporate couples where no wife-identifying person is involved.
...so it doesn’t work well in a technical sense, but it remains very catchy.
I think wife rolls of the tongue uniquely well here due to ‘wife’ rhyming with ‘life’, creating the pun. Outside of that I don’t buy it. In Denmark, wife-jokes are common despite wife being a two syllable word (kone) and husband-jokes are rare despite husband being a one syllable word (mand).
My model of why we see this has much more to do with gender norms and normalised misogyny than with catchiness of the words.
Good point, though I would prefer we name it Quality Adjusted Spouse Years :)
but it’s such a good pun!
+1, you could make it Quality Adjusted Wedded Years if you want to keep the acronym.
(That’s what I thought it stood for when you (= Richard) first told me about it)
It was, but I succumbed to the pun.
IMHO the pun is hilarious and I’m glad you went with it.
The “Wife” can refer to one’s years AS a wife or one’s years of HAVING a wife
Monogamy Adjusted Wedded Years
But I’m not sure how to adjust for monogamy. More research is needed.
On the Devil’s Advocate side: “Wife” just rolls off the tongue in a way “husband” doesn’t. That’s why we have “wife guys” and “my wife!” jokes, but no memes that do much with the word “husband”. (Sometimes we substitute the one-syllable word “man”, as in “it’s raining men” or “get you a man who can do both”.)
You could also parse “wife years” as “years of being a wife” from the female perspective, though of course this still fails to incorporate couples where no wife-identifying person is involved.
...so it doesn’t work well in a technical sense, but it remains very catchy.
I think wife rolls of the tongue uniquely well here due to ‘wife’ rhyming with ‘life’, creating the pun. Outside of that I don’t buy it. In Denmark, wife-jokes are common despite wife being a two syllable word (kone) and husband-jokes are rare despite husband being a one syllable word (mand).
My model of why we see this has much more to do with gender norms and normalised misogyny than with catchiness of the words.