Not long ago I was sitting in my kitchen with a Radio 4 panel game burbling in the background when I heard a comedian talking about her wife. I soon twigged that she meant her female partner: life partner, not writing or performing partner. More recently, and still on Radio 4, Adam and Ian, the gay couple in The Archers, have married and now refer to each other as “husband”.I believe in equal status under the law for formalised same-sex partnerships, and I wish any married gay couple well; but I can’t help feeling that referring to a union between two people of the same sex as a marriage is a metaphor. Surely, “husband” means the male half of a traditional marriage, while “wife” means the female half? In fact, a little research shows that these ar