1650 M. à Vauts Husband's Authority Unvail'd viii. 84 If Wife-Beating be wicked or sinfull,..I cannot have justly incurred th' account of a Wife-Beater.

1753 Newcastle Gen. Mag. Aug. 426/1 The perpetration of the most infamous crimes of wife-beating and adultery.

1854 Morning Post 21 Oct. 4/3 It is but another instance of ‘wife-beating’—a significant and awful term.

1895 London Story Paper 20 July 5/3 The burly coward (he had been sentenced for wife-beating) accepted the invitation without more ado.

1915 Lincoln (Nebraska) Daily News 24 Mar. 6/6 If abused women would have the nerve to see that their brutish husbands were punished..there would be less wife beating.

1978 Sat. Night (Toronto) Dec. 24/3 ‘Alcohol-related offences’—courtroom jargon for stabbings and wife-beatings.

2014 Star of Mysore (India) (Nexis) 18 Dec. Children of families in which wife-beating is a routine, start believing that this is acceptable in our society.

1740 ‘Sophia’ Woman's Superior Excellence over Man 5 Does he take all the Women for such easy ideots that they are to be coax'd out of their natural right by every fawning sycophant..or braved out of it by every wife-beating bully?

1830 M. R. Mitford Our Village IV. 86 An assurance of tenderness and protection such as no wife-beating tyrant..ever could inspire.

1881 Shield of Faith Jan. 1/2 The youngest child of a wife-beating husband knows that it is evil temper, selfish lust, and not mere superior physical power which leads to such cruelty.

1922 Psychoanalytic Rev. 9 95 A childhood passed with a brutal wife-beating father and a dishonored mother.

1960 E. Rosenberg From Shylock to Svengali vi. 146 A very bad husband, a wife-beating husband, but nevertheless one who keeps the family together.

2015 Canberra Times (Nexis) 31 Jan. a16 Ramsay's father was a womanising, wife-beating alcoholic.