Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The practice or condition of having only one wife at a time.
  • noun A mating pattern in which a male mates with one female in a single breeding season.
  • noun The condition of having only one queen. Used of an insect colony.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In zoology and anthropology, a mating with only one female or wife; the monogynous state: correlated with monandry.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Marriage with the one woman only.
  • noun (Bot.) The state or condition of being monogynous.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The practice of having one wife at the same time.
  • noun The condition in ants of having only one queen at a time.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun having only one wife at a time

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Despite praise for levirate marriage, it was almost completely abandoned by the end of the second century C.E. as it often clashed with the move toward monogyny.

    Post-Biblical and Rabbinic Women. 2009

  • However, internal developments, as well as the influence of the western civilizations under whose aegis the Jews had come beginning with the third century B.C.E. (the Greeks and then the Romans), tended toward monogyny and dowry marriages.

    Post-Biblical and Rabbinic Women. 2009

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