You might go with a word that was well-understood in the Shakespearean era:

shrew

2: an ill-tempered scolding woman
_{definition from m-w.com}

Thus the henpecked husband could say "I didn't realize it at the time but I soon discovered that I'd married a real shrew."

You can have your pick, I like harridan. But look at the synonym list, it's hysterical.

har·ri·dan

[ˈherəd(ə)n]

NOUN

a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman.

"a bullying old harridan"

synonyms: shrew · virago · harpy · termagant · vixen · nag · hag · crone · dragon · ogress · fishwife · hellcat · she-devil · fury · gorgon · martinet · tartar · spitfire · old bag · old bat

— Oxford Dictionaries (Definition and synonyms) via Bing.

The verb henpeck means:

[Merriam-Webster]

: to subject (one's spouse or partner) to persistent nagging and domination

Using the common noun counterpart, you would simply say, "That woman is a nag":

[Merriam-Webster]

noun

: one who nags habitually

An unambiguous colloquial phrase for this is She Who Must Be Obeyed. It even has a Wikipedia page.

The meaning of the phrase is pretty clear just from the literal words put together, but here's a source:

informal, depreciative

A strong-willed or domineering woman, especially a wife or female partner.

_{-- Oxford Dictionaries}

It may also be shortened to simply SWMBO.

Yes, henpecker is a word, feel free to use it.

There's no board of people who decide what is and isn't a word, so adding -er to an -ed word is fine, as seen in standard words like clean-ed, clean-er, so it makes perfect sense that henpeck-ed has the form henpeck-er.

One who henpecks or nags.

From Wiktionary.

And from Definition Of,

A nagging wife

Recognised word from Glosbe and WordHippo.

Google Books results

Example from Understanding the Male Temperament by Tim LaHaye:

I have never met a happy henpecked husband--nor, for that matter, have I met a happy henpecker. You can count on this: In his frustration, a henpecked man will dedicate himself to making his henpecker miserable.

And Ngrams. There appears to be a spike in the '70s, FWIW.

See this Yahoo Answers thread for further research (I know it says "hen picker", but I believe this is a mistake, as corrected by the answers.)

Lots of good answers, but I'm surprised I do not see fishwife:

noun

A person, traditionally a woman, who persistently nags or criticizes:

The Free Dictionary

The word often used in drama, though not so widely used today is

a scold

Oxford Dictionaries says

NOUN
US
archaic
A person, in particular a woman, who nags or grumbles constantly.

‘his mother was the village scold’
‘the fiscal scolds insist that reform will make everything even worse’

As you see, it is marked as archaic.

A "nag", which literally means an old mare.

Ya, different animal than a chicken. "shrew" is seldom used in the U.S., but "nag" definitely is. Many suggestions here may be correct, but are not in common usage, so would sound weird (at least in the U.S.)

Grey mare is an older phrase used to refer to a woman who has the final say in a marriage. Here's an excerpt from the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) explaining the term:

The Grey Mare is the better horse. The woman is paramount. It is said that a man wished to buy a horse, but his wife took a fancy to a grey mare, and so pertinaciously insisted that the grey mare was the better horse, that the man was obliged to yield the point.

The phrase sometimes appears outside of the saying, as in this translation of Martial's epigram 560 (book X, epigram LXIX), which describes a wife with excessive control over her husband as a grey mare:

You have the husband's latch-key, he has none;

You are the grey mare, Polla, when all's done.

This passage in Latin literally describes putting a husband in the place of a wife (translation in italics):

Custodes das, Polla, viro, non accipis ipsa. Polla, you give your husband guards that you don't receive yourself

Hoc est uxorem ducere, Polla, virum. This is making your husband into a wife, Polla.

That said, you may notice something about all of these excerpts. They come from sources that date to the start of the 20th century. Grey mare, rather like henpecked husband, is old-fashioned because of its many pejorative associations. These terms come from a sexist topos that women exerting power in a marriage is contrary to an established order, and a man who allows his partner to make decisions is diminished.

Per my comments, contemporary answers are unlikely to be single words (e.g. 'shrew' is archaic/literary), and verb-phrases/adjective-phrases are more common for this than noun phrases:

• she is a henpecking wife


• she henpecks her husband


• she is a henpecker


• she is a nag


• nags her husband

Here is data from Google Ngrams (from literature, not spoken) corroborating that; "nags her husband" seems to be the most common:

A Kvetch, from Yiddish, has several meanings, including:

1 : a habitual complainer

I’ve heard Jews of an older generation use ballbuster to mean a henpecking wife specifically, I think as a pun on balabusta, Yiddish for a good homemaker. Merriam-Webster defines it as:

a person who is relentlessly aggressive, intimidating, or domineering

In practice, I’ve always heard it used to refer to women.

A somewhat more serious variant of "hen" is biddy:

1. a chicken or chick; esp., a hen




2. Informal a woman; esp., an elderly woman (usually old biddy) regarded contemptuously as annoying, gossipy, etc.

— Collins Dictionary

I've generally taken the word, when used to refer to a fowl (not foul) female, to mean the one who "rules the roost".

This seems to be a fairly good complement of "henpecked", in both the literal and figurative senses.

The closest actual synonym is perhaps

ball-breaker

(or ball-buster).

What is the sense of a henpecker?

It's a relationship where the woman "tells the man what to do" - she usurps the (supposed) dominating, leading role of the male by constantly telling the male what to do, by "getting the upper hand", by commanding situations.

A harridan is "any" "bossy old woman". If you were using this archaic word, you could use it to describe any (say) bossy female politician, bossy old widow, etc.

In contrast, a henpecker (or "ball-buster") is specifically a wife who eliminates the masculinity, authority of the husband, through constant nattering.

And a shrew, if you were to use that archaic word - for me a shrew is a mean / bad-tempered / etc "independent woman" who doesn't even want to get married or have anything to do with men.

Regarding words like "nag" or "cow" ...

A vulgar synonym of "henpecked" is "pussy-whipped"; the point is the male's (supposed, whatever) usual place of authority, of decision over day to day elements in the household, has been usurped by the female. So, while a henpecker wife may indeed be a nag, or a cow, she may indeed just be "loud" ... but then, conversely, she may be the "silent staring" type of henpecker! If you're really trying to describe the notion that she has "got it over" the husband - the husband is henpecked or "pussy-whipped" - about the only real synonym of "henpecker" I can think of is "ball-buster".

Or indeed perhaps simply "dominating wife" as a phrase.

Contrary to all the pejorative answers here, while a henpecked husband might be considered unusual in those cultures that share the concept, that doesn't necessarily (or even usually) imply his wife must be abnormally strong or aggressive. Rather it'd be a case where, for whatever reasons, maybe the husband is too delicate, or too exhausted by the world, or too needy, so that their respective strengths don't balance harmoniously.

In which case the more or less normal wife would be called "Dear", or "The Mrs.", or "The Boss", etc.

Some pop culture examples. Caspar Milquetoast:

Harold Bissonette (W.C. Fields) from It's a Gift.

There's probably no point in their respective stories where either character ever much resents his
own wife, or considers them a dragon. However passive they seem married, they'd be no less passive single, like Mike Judge's Milton.

Shrew is probably the best-known of many synonyms and near-synonyms, because of the Shakespeare play. An entry I have not seen in the other answers is Xanthippe, the name of the wife of Socrates’, alleged to have been such a woman.

The best answer for you depends upon which qualities of the wife you want to emphasize. If, for example, you want to keep your hole card face down, 'virago', with its superior range of senses, might be most suitable:

virago, n.

....
2.
a. A man-like, vigorous, and heroic woman; a female warrior; an amazon. Now rare.

3. A bold, impudent (†or wicked) woman; a termagant, a scold.

OED (paywalled).

Although sense 2a is "[n]ow rare", that accident of usage frequency need not keep the sense from being what you intend, if pressed on the point.

The prefix 'arch-' might also be handy for your purpose:

arch-, prefix

...one who occupies a position or rank above those who bear the simple title [of 'wife' in this case]

OED (paywalled).

As the OED mentions, "...[s]ince the 16th cent., arch- has been freely prefixed to names of agents and appellatives...". So, even though 'archwife' in the sense of a

'...wife of a superior order' (Tyrwhitt); a strong or masterful wife, a virago...

op. cit.

is obsolete, the use of the prefix 'arch-', as well as its meaning, remains contemporary, and will be readily understood.