polygyny
Americannoun
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the practice or condition of having more than one wife at one time.
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(among male animals) the habit or system of having two or more mates, either simultaneously or successively.
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(among social insects) the condition of having two or more functioning queens in a colony.
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Botany. the state or condition of having many pistils or styles.
noun
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the practice or condition of being married to more than one wife at the same time Compare polygamy
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the practice in animals of a male mating with more than one female during one breeding season
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the condition in flowers of having many carpels
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of polygyny
1770–80; < Greek polygýn ( aios ) having many wives ( see poly-, gyn-) + -y 3
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.
While polygyny - the marriage of a man to several women - is allowed in South Africa, such relationships are usually registered as customary marriages and are not celebrated in church.
From BBC • May 3, 2025
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
In resourced-based polygyny, males compete for territories with the best resources, and then mate with females that enter the territory, drawn to its resource richness.
From Textbooks • Jun. 9, 2022
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
Apart from this the biological masculine traditions point to polygyny much more than the feminine traditions point to polyandry.
From Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 Sex in Relation to Society by Ellis, Havelock
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
