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
Marston lived for most of his adult life in a ménage with three women: his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston; a librarian named Marjorie Wilkes Huntley; and Olive Byrne, who was Sanger’s niece.
From The New Yorker ● May 7, 2015
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
Modern opinion is shocked by a discrepancy in age between husband and wife, with which the Middle Ages, a time of ménages de convenance, was more familiar.
From Medieval People by Eileen Edna Power
There are forty similar ménages north of Thirty-third Street and east of Long Acre Square.
From Mortmain by Arthur Cheny Train
This will cause some tribulation in the small ménages, where the cheap, popular, and handy gas-stove has replaced the coal or charcoal ovens and ranges.
From Paris War Days Diary of an American by Charles Inman Barnard
The system of double ménages, however, decreased as manners became more liberal, and opportunities for social intercourse between the sexes increased.
From The South American Republics Part I of II by Thomas C. Dawson
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.
