dowry

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English

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Etymology

From Middle English dowarye, dowerie, from Anglo-Norman dowarie, douarie, from Old French douaire, from Medieval Latin dōtārium, from Latin dōs.

Pronunciation

Noun

dowry (countable and uncountable, plural dowries)

  1. Payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.
  2. (less common) Payment by the groom or his family to the bride's family: bride price.
    • 2009, Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi, page 125:
      The family of the groom makes sure the new couple has a house to live in and land to cultivate; they will also pay for the dowry (crucial, for without dowry the new father has no rights over his children; Trouwborst 1962: 136ff.)
  3. (obsolete) Dower.
  4. A natural gift or talent.
  5. (informal) A large amount.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of E. M. Forster to this entry?)
    But no palace had so fair a ceiling; for from the wooden beams were suspended a whole dowry of copper vessels—pails, cauldrons, water pots, of every colour from lustrous black to the palest pink.

Antonyms

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Related terms

Translations

References

  • (large amount): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

Verb

dowry (third-person singular simple present dowries, present participle dowrying, simple past and past participle dowried)

  1. To bestow a dowry upon.
    • 1999, Judith Everard, Michael C. E. Jones, Charters Duchess Constance Br, page xvi:
    • 2013, Noreen Giffney, Margrit Shildrick, Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, page 62:
    • 1911, Aida Rodman De Milt, Ways and Days Out of London, page 108:
      1976, Graham Anderson, Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction, Page 19

See also

References

  1. ^ Gary Ferraro & Susan Andreatta, Cultural Anthropology, 8th edn. (Belmont, Cal: Wadsworth, 2010), 223.

Anagrams

Middle English

Noun

dowry

  1. Alternative form of dowarye
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