home-wreckingn.
/ˈhəʊmˌrɛkɪŋ/, U.S. /ˈhoʊmˌrɛkɪŋ/ The action of ruining a family, home, or relationship; esp. the action of breaking up a marriage or similar long-term relationship by having an affair with one of the partners.
ΚΠ
1878 Wonderful London 417 Home-wrecking on the modern loan-office principle is one of the best paying dodges a man without a conscience can turn his attention to.
1892 San Francisco Chron. 24 Apr. 11/3 Many is the woman with property in her own name that he has succeeded in drawing from her husband and children. And in his business of home wrecking he seems to rejoice.
1919 Granite Monthly Nov. 466 The saddest sight of earth is a wrecked home; and the man, or woman guilty of the sin of home-wrecking, is one of the meanest creatures on God's footstool.
1972 Victorian Stud. 16 49 A violator of her marriage vows..started the evil Virginia on her vengeful course of homewrecking.
2009 M. Early Things we do for Love viii. 137 The Billingham side of her knew that breaking up someone's engagement was just a hair on the right side of home-wrecking.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
home-wreckingadj.
/ˈhəʊmˌrɛkɪŋ/, U.S. /ˈhoʊmˌrɛkɪŋ/ depreciative.
Designating a person who or thing which ruins or breaks up a family, home, or relationship; spec. designating a person blamed for the break-up of a marriage because of an affair with one of the partners. Cf. home-wrecker n.
ΚΠ
1878 W. Gurney tr. Æschylus Septem Contra Thebas 52 My flesh creeps cold with fear At this home-wrecking sprite.
1892 R. A. Hadfield & H. de B. Gibbins Shorter Working Day App. I. 175 A misery-producing, disease-engendering, home-wrecking system.
1913 Everybody's Mag. Nov. 684/2 Irene Fenwick made the home-wrecking actress an ingenuous, white-mouse-like person, with a delicate but convincing indication that even white mice are rodents.
1933 W. Faulkner Artist at Home in Coll. Stories (1934) 642 And here we are again: the bald husband, the rural plute, and this dashing blade, this home-wrecking poet.
1972 Jrnl. Interdisciplinary Hist. 3 445 The importance [to the status of children] of a home-wrecking adult mortality.
2002 Wall St. Jrnl. 11 Feb. a20/6 You had to hate her, the home-wrecking hussy.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1878adj.1878