Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Anthropology Marriage within a particular group in accordance with custom or law.
- n. Botany Fertilization resulting from pollination among flowers of the same plant.
- n. Biology Reproduction by the fusion of gametes of similar ancestry.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Marriage within the tribe: a custom among some savage peoples: opposed to exogamy.
- n. In botany, the fusion or coalescence of two or more female gametes.
Wiktionary
- n. The practice of marrying or requiring to marry within one’s own ethnic, religious, or social group.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Marriage only within the tribe; a custom restricting a man in his choice of a wife to the tribe to which he belongs; -- opposed to
exogamy .
WordNet 3.0
- n. marriage within one's own tribe or group as required by custom or law
Etymologies
- endo- + -gamy (Wiktionary)
Examples
“There is no evidence of the practice of endogamy which is so widespread among the Oceanic peoples.”
The Manóbos of Mindanáo Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir
“In sociological terms, marrying within one’s ethnic or religious group is called endogamy, while marrying outside is exogamy.”
“Natural selection has determined that exogamy produces fitter progeny than endogamy.”
“Traditionally, Huaorani families engage in endogamy -- especially cross-cousin marriages.”
“But we can get around that (using words like endogamy and homophily).”
The Huffington Post: Philip N. Cohen: Take My Words For It: Homogamy and Heterogamy
“Seeing their crushes being swept away from them, a trio of girls, Leah Goldstein, Rebecca Goldman and Abby Goldberg goKabbalistic on the competition by creating a golem out of Playdohtomete out justice in the name of endogamy.”
“Thus endogamy, rather than being used to create or sustain a narrow elite, was instead a component of a more general settler identity that embraced landed gentry, middling stock farmers, and households of modest means.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Exogamous unions with newly-arrived immigrants, with locally-born settlers from previously unrelated families (including free blacks), and with manumitted slaves coexisted with endogamy, suggesting that parents and/or cohorts of siblings sought to reinforce existing connections and to make new alliances in every generation.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“The prevalence of familial endogamy evident in the second and third generations of van Heerden marriages was more common.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Kin networks, endogamy, and repeated affinal marriages were evident by the second generation, establishing patterns that persisted throughout the eighteenth century.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘endogamy’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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A Galimafrée of Plant Anatomy & Morph...
A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
*array, collecti...naked bud, leaf blade, brochidodromous, serrate, cork cambium, rhizomatous, flower stalk, deciduous sepal, petal, whorl, nectar gland, stamen and 1348 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Disturbing definitions from the Centu...
Although the Century Dictionary has some exquisite definitions which exhibit attention to scientific detail and respect for terms, ideas, and technology that might otherwise be forgotten, this wind...
cockshy, homosexuality, niggard, sodomy, Creole, promiscuity, savage, ass, hamfatter, ill-gendered, madras, hydrencephalocele and 22 more...
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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Joe's list
Fissiparous Weekly Standard Nigeria a fissiparous country 3/2012
fissiparous, inchoate, punctilious, synecdoche, apocryphal, superadd, pedant, pedagogy, astigmatic, inter alia, aphoristically, eponymous and 131 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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Tolland's list
Those I've come across and try to keep fresh within my mind.
clandestine, dysphoric, indictive, vigil, fractious, assiduous, indefatigable, ubiquitous, insidious, paroicous, aplomb, sangfroid and 654 more...
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1906 Railway Cipher Code
Terms from the Standard Cipher Code of the American Railway Association, 1906. The terms were shorthand for common phrases used in telegraphic communications between station agents and Railway Asso...
abetting, abdominal, abiology, ablative, abnormal, abominate, aboveboard, abrasive, absinth, abstinent, accursed, acetate and 212 more...
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Zoological Terms
Terms used in Zoology
papilionaceous, actinost, gressorial, exuviate, nitid, trochal, demiss, loculus, crebrity, limes, pachytrichous, pachydactyl and 319 more...
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Botanical Terms
Terms used in botany
contabescence, effloresce, foliate, acervate, nuciform, feracious, fructuous, bifarious, serotinous, sative, demiss, tardive and 168 more...
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froseph's list
saritorial, pogrom, synecdoche, metonymy, tonsorial, prophylactic, ozymandias, nepenthe, tonsorial, tranche, allodium, allodial and 156 more...
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justgig8's list
Any input is welcome. CAT aspirants invited in particular.
surreptitious, clandestine, resilient, logorrhea, capricious, vindicate, voluptuous, opulence, anathema, pragmatic, ingenuous, ingenious and 17 more...
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Age of Aquarius Words
carpe diem, de rigueur, ad hominem, bowdlerize, tantalize, excogitate, exogamy, endogamy, logophile, neophobia, lexiphanic, abdicate and 69 more...
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Anthropology
Words used in anthropology and in its sub-disciplines, such as zooarchaeology.
bonobo, troglodyte, sus scrofa, canis lupus famil..., canis lupus, castor canadensis, zooarchaeology, archaeology, anthropology, australopithecus ..., australopithecine, linnaean and 13 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for endogamy.

hernesheir "Will engine require coal?" --US Railway Association, Standard Cipher Code, 1906. Jan 22, 2013
fbharjo dog(a)matic?
ottomatic? Jan 11, 2013
ruzuzu Some definitions might have been written more than 100 years ago. I'll add this to my list of disturbing-definitions-from-the-century-dictionary. Jan 10, 2013
frogapplause Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
n. Marriage within the tribe: a custom among some savage peoples: opposed to exogamy.
Savage peoples? When was this definition written ... 100 years ago? Jan 10, 2013
chained_bear "To choose a mate from inside the cousinhood seemed right, because a wedding within the clan kept intact estates and black villages that would otherwise be divided by fresh blood. Since other colonial families did the same, the fund of suitable mates never grew much. Anthropologists call it endogamy—the prohibition of marriage outside the group, in this case the caste of slave owners. The Anglican Church, citing the book of Leviticus, banned sex between close kin. Nearly all the rice families, including the Balls, were careful Episcopalians, but they did not mind trespassing the old Mosaic law. So they married each other, as an aunt of mine used to say, 'until they all grew tails.'"
—Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (NY: Ballantine Books, 1998), 242 Oct 12, 2009