patrilocal

[pa-truh-loh-kuhl, pey-]

adjective

Anthropology.

1. virilocal.

patrilocal

/ ˌpætrɪˈləʊkəl /

adjective

1. having or relating to a marriage pattern in which the couple lives with the husband's family

Other Word Forms

• patrilocally adverb
• patrilocality noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of patrilocal¹

First recorded in 1905–10; patri- + local

Example Sentences

The majority of societies today are patrilocal, meaning women move to their husband's communities.

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But the DNA shows their patrilocal traditions persisted.

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IBD analysis showed how women influenced Gurgy’s patrilocal community.

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That suggests that among these Neolithic Britons, women were buried with the family of their mates, not their parents—an echo of arrangements in the later El Argar culture that opens the possibility that the people at Hazleton were patrilocal, too.

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For example, if hunter-gatherer societies were patrilocal—with women leaving home to marry men from other communities—“pottery could be a female craft that spread from village to village through marriage,” McLaughlin says.

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