bigamy
(ˈbɪgəmɪ)
Forms: 3–7 bigamie, 4 bygamye, 6 bygamy, 6– bigamy.
[a. F. bigamie, f. bigame: see bigame and -y.]
1. Marriage with a second wife or husband during the lifetime of the first; the crime of having two wives or husbands at once.
| c 1250 Gen. & Ex. 449 Bigamie is unkinde ðing, On engleis tale, twie-wifing. c 1386 Chaucer Wife's Prol. 54 Of shrewed Lamech and his bigamie. 1460 J. Capgrave Chron. (1858) 5 Lamech, that broute in first bigamie. 1660 Stanley Hist. Philos. (1701) 97/2 The occasion, whereupon the Athenians..allowed bigamy. c 1725 Pope Mart. Scribl. xiii, A suit against Martin for Bigamy. 1884 Pall Mall G. 4 Mar. 3/2 Bigamy cases seldom have any legal interest for lawyers at the present day. |
b. (Used fig. or loosely.)
| 1635 J. Taylor (Water P.) Old Parr D j, Each man had many wives, which Bigamie, Was such increase to their Posterity. a 1658 Cleveland Gen. Poems (1677) 70 But is this Bigamy of Titles due? Are you Sir Thomas and Sir Martin too? |
2. Eccl. Law. Re-marriage after the death of a first wife (or husband); marriage of, or with, a widow (or widower). Obs. exc. Hist.
| [1345 Act [in Rastell 1557] 18 Edw. III, ii, De trier par enquestes ou en auter maner la bygamie.] 1528 More Conf. agst. Trib. iii. Wks. 229/1 The forbidding of bigamy by y⊇ wedding of one wife after another. 1543 Grafton Cont. Harding 504 It is..a greate blemishe to the sacred maiestie of a prince..to bee defiled w{supt} bigamy in his first mariage. 1594 Shakes. Rich. III, iii. vii. 189 Seduc'd..To base declension, and loath'd Bigamie. 1752 Fielding Amelia vi. vii, I shall not enter into the question concerning the legality of bigamy. Our laws certainly allow it. 1865 Nichols Britton II. 25 note, Bigamy (in the ancient and proper sense of the word) involved the loss of the benefit of clergy. |