polygyny

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.

While polygyny - the marriage of a man to several women - is allowed in South Africa, such relationships are usually registered as customary marriages and are not celebrated in church.

From BBC • May 3, 2025

To compensate for the disappearance of so many young men, who were the laborers most preferred by plantation owners, many African ethnic groups adopted polygyny, allowing men to take multiple wives.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Adult relationships vary in form across societies and include not only the type most common around the world today — heterosexual monogamy — but also same-sex marriage, nonmarital unions, polyamory, polygyny and polyandry.

From Washington Post • Jun. 17, 2022

These estimates, they wrote, are still within the range you'd find for societies described as "monogamous or serially monogamous, although they also overlap with those characterizing polygyny."

From Slate • Oct. 9, 2012

In Tibet itself polygyny exists side by side with polyandry amongst the wealthy classes, while monogamy is the rule amongst the poor pastoral nomads of the northern steppe.

From Man, Past and Present by Haddon, Alfred Court