group marriage

American  

noun

1. (among primitive peoples) a form of marriage in which a group of males is united with a group of females to form a single conjugal unit.

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group marriage British  

noun

1. an arrangement in which several males live together with several females, forming a conjugal unit

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Etymology

Origin of group marriage

First recorded in 1895–1900

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

group marriage

In fact, Guiteau had so little luck during his five-plus years living at the Oneida Community, a New York religious commune that practiced group marriage, that the women there nicknamed him “Charles Git-out.”

From Washington Post ● Aug. 21, 2019

An unconventional look at the director’s conventional parents, who lived in a group marriage in the ’70s.

From New York Times ● Feb. 25, 2010

Kohler, on the other hand155, speaks of group marriage as existing among the Omahas, a patrilineal tribe, be it remarked; but means by that no more than adelphic polygyny.

From Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia by Northcote Whitridge Thomas

One was the distinction between our retreats and group marriage counseling on the one hand, sensitivity training and encounter groups on the other.

From Marriage Enrichment Retreats Story of a Quaker Project by D. R. (David Robert) Mace

But it was nevertheless his good fortune to encounter in his Punaluan family the highest, the classical, form of group marriage, that form which gave the simplest clue for the transition to a higher stage.

From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels