polygyny

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

To compensate for the disappearance of so many young men, who were the laborers most preferred by plantation owners, many African ethnic groups adopted polygyny, allowing men to take multiple wives.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Adult relationships vary in form across societies and include not only the type most common around the world today — heterosexual monogamy — but also same-sex marriage, nonmarital unions, polyamory, polygyny and polyandry.

From Washington Post • Jun. 17, 2022

While the tomb reveals evidence of polygyny - men having children with multiple women - it also shows that polyandry was also widespread: women having children with multiple men.

From BBC • Dec. 23, 2021

Coontz points to past Native American societies that occasionally engaged in what’s known as sororal polygyny, in which a man married to one woman might also marry her sister, perhaps after the sister’s husband died.

From Slate • Jan. 30, 2012

Our polygyny has no legal existence, and therefore its obligations can have no legal existence.

From Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 Sex in Relation to Society by Ellis, Havelock