trigamy

[trig-uh-mee]

noun

1. the state of having three wives or three husbands at one time.

2. the state of having been lawfully married to three wives or three husbands at different times.

Other Word Forms

• trigamist noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of trigamy¹

1605–15; < Late Latin trigamia < Greek trigamía, equivalent to trígam ( os ) thrice-married + -ia -y ³. See tri-, -gamy

Example Sentences

There is a glut of bizarre detail in the Lewis chapters that might not be to everyone’s taste: weird sex inside a hot tub; an ex-husband in prison for trigamy; a hermit wearing girls’ underwear as jewelry; a low-grade psychotic artist who creates sculptures from garbage, electrical tape and cat skeletons and adorns them with earrings made of used tampons.

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It was a good idea and undoubtedly you would have cleaned up on it—were it not for the fact that I am under the far from painful necessity of arresting you on a charge of bigamy—or would you call it 'trigamy'?

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No lady is going to be poisoned; there is no mysterious murder; neither bigamy, trigamy, nor quadrigamy; in fact, not a single gamy in the book, though once bordering upon that happy state.

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This curious person, whose good works have already led him to commit trigamy, engages a band of actors to enter a dismal lodging house and play roles necessary to the happiness of the various inmates.

Read more on Time Magazine Archive

Because he wants to get his picture, as the peer convicted of trigamy, on the back page of the ‘Daily Mail,’ with the fourth wife inset.

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