#but of course I don't speak scots so bilingual speakers will modulate towards Scots Standard English when talking with me

[anarchotolkienist]

Wait, you are saying “wifey” comes directly from Old English? I think I’d only hear an older woman, who’d typically have gotten married already, be called a wifey, so I’d imagined it had more recent origins, ie after “wife” had its presently established meaning

To be clear, I don't speak Doric, but my friend who's a native speaker uses Wifie to refer to any adult woman, and the Dictionaries of the Scots Language has "wif" in use as "a woman" between the earliest Scots distinct from English in the 12th century as late as the 17th Century, and wifie defined in 19th century Scots as a dialectical form of Wife, defined as 'A woman in general, whether married or not' - I wouldn't be surprised if the meaning is shifting towards the English though, this is the general trend in Scots. But as I say, I know young native speakers who still use it in its old meaning, so it's not entirely dead.