communal marriage

American  

noun

1. group marriage.

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Etymology

Origin of communal marriage

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

Their social organization is of a very primitive kind, though they already have emerged from the stage of "communal marriage," even under the gentile restrictions.

From Mutual Aid; a factor of evolution by Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz

This system finds a complete explanation in a certain form of communal marriage now in process of decline in Hawaii and some Australian islands.

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

But at the time when communal marriage still existed—and in all probability it once existed everywhere—a tribe was subdivided into a number of groups—"gentes"—consanguineous on the mother's side, within which intermarrying was strictly forbidden.

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

By the side of this marital form, there is in practice on the same islands a system of kinship only explicable by a still more primeval and now extinct form of communal marriage.

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

He asserts that communal marriage is purely the outgrowth of imagination, and in so doing falls far behind Bachofen.

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