ménage
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of ménage
First recorded on 1250–1300; Middle English, from French, ultimately from unattested Vulgar Latin mansiōnāticum; see mansion, -age
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.
See Examples For:
Conversations With Friends asks whether it is possible to sustain authentic connections to people in the presence of flawed, overarching structures: capitalism, patriarchy, a devilish ménage à quatre.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2017
As the magnetic and impulsive Catherine, Moreau is the force at the center of Truffaut’s celebrated New Wave classic and the focal point of its Bohemian ménage a trois tragedy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2017
The large family is a thing of the past, generally speaking, which is why such a ménage fascinates me: siblings competing for attention, being rancorous and rivalrous.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 20, 2016
On reflection, as bizarre as the Macmillan ménage was, its use as an alibi now appears to me to be weak.
From Newsweek ● Apr. 15, 2013
It might get noised about that the Pontelliers had met with reverses, and were forced to conduct their ménage on a humbler scale than heretofore.
From "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
Meanwhile, the Colette-Willys — bohemian, avant-garde and in and out of complex ménages — took Paris by storm.
From New York Times ● Feb. 6, 2023
Placed as they were, with such infinitely more possibilities of happiness than nine ménages out of ten—though leaving out unfortunately one, and that the most important part—love—it was terrible that they should quarrel.
From Bird of Paradise by Ada Leverson
What brick and mortar idylls, what romances au cinquième, what joyous epithalamiums, what gay improvident ménages, what kisses, what laughter, what tears, what lightly-spoken and lightly-broken vows those old walls could have told of!
From In the Days of My Youth by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
As in the ostrich family, it is the male that has the entire care of the family from the moment the eggs are laid—a fairer division of labor than we see in most ménages.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. by Various
So far from being “Music wedded to immortal Verse,” these instances resemble those ménages wherein each unit leads a separate existence.
From Style in Singing by W. E. Haslam
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.
