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Bigamy   Listen
Bigamy

noun
1.
Having two spouses at the same time.
2.
The offense of marrying someone while you have a living spouse from whom no valid divorce has occurred.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bigamy" Quotes from Famous Books



... drama in Chicago, can enjoy but a temporary success. The former city will always return to its love of standard comedies and SHAKSPEAREAN tragedies, and the latter will sooner or later clamor for its accustomed legs and its favorite dramas of bigamy and divorce. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... which the spouses promised exclusive fidelity, the man as much as the woman. As fast and as far as church marriage was introduced, the promise set the idea of marriage. If either broke the promise, he or she was liable to church censure and penance. In England the first civil law against bigamy was I James I, chapter 11. Never until 1563 (Council of Trent) was any ecclesiastical act necessary to the validity of a marriage even in the forum of the church. Marriage was in the mores. The blessing of the church was edifying and contributory. It was not essential. Marriage was popular and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... more savings of the workers swallowed up!" "The mayor of Sandy Creek, Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousand dollars. That's the kind of rulers the old partyites give you!" "The president of the Florida Flying Machine Company is in jail for bigamy. He was a prominent opponent of Socialism, which he said would break up the home!" The "Appeal" had what it called its "Army," about thirty thousand of the faithful, who did things for it; and it was always exhorting the "Army" to keep its dander up, and occasionally encouraging ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... been reading? The Standard: "Double Bigamy;" "Speech of the Mayor." And later—eh? yes! I meandered Through some chapters of Vanity Fair. How it fuses the grave with the festive! Yet e'en there, there is nothing so fine - So playfully, subtly suggestive - As ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... fathoms of stone wall to steal a musket; and so on to the end of the catalogue. The judge being provided with a book in which all these matters are cunningly arranged, the thing is vastly convenient. For instance: a crime is proved,—say bigamy; turn to letter B—and there you have it. Bigamy:—forty days on the Broom Road, and twenty mats for the queen. Read the passage aloud, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... any want of consideration for you or Conolly," said Marmaduke, sulkily. "No doubt it's rough on you. But as to the feelings of the family, I tell you flatly that I dont care if the whole crew were brought to the Old Bailey to-morrow and convicted of bigamy. It would take the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... somebody stands to lose something,' I thought. But the insurance companies are too wide to stand all the risk themselves. They share it out, you know. It's a mere flea-bite to them. And ... a ... well then there's a ... See, then there's a bigamy case." ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... She had long been living with the Duke, but in 1769 she obtained a divorce a mensa et thoro, which she believed erroneously annulled the marriage. The Duke died in 1773, when all his titles became extinct. His Duchess was in the following year tried before the House of Lords for bigamy, found guilty, but, pleading benefit of peerage, was discharged. Thus, she carried out the prognostication of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who had opposed the prosecution. "The arguments about the place of trial suggest ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... to make themselves unattractive in his sight. But the head that wears a crown apparently has fascinations which few women can resist, and legend tells more frequently of Pedro's conquests than of his rebuffs. He was an ardent lover to whom marriage vows were of no importance; that he committed bigamy is certain—and pardonable, but some historians are inclined to think that he had at one and the same time no less than three wives. He was oriental ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... not dispute what she said. If this woman could prove the marriage of thirty years ago, then Krill, or Norman as he called himself, had committed bigamy, and, in the hard eyes of the law, Sylvia was nobody's child. And that the marriage could be proved Paul saw well enough from the looks of the lawyer, who was studying the certificate which he had drawn from the shabby blue envelope. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... laughter] Ha! Ha! Ha! So Mr. Davenport has been talking to you! But you all seem to forget one small point—bigamy is not permitted ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... of that. He has a wife already. She left him years ago, and runs a boarding-house somewhere on Hill Street, I believe," Blaine replied. "I don't fancy he'll add bigamy to the rest of his nefarious acts. But tell me of the other girls. They did not report ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... momentous, unforgivable, incalculable. It assumed to her the proportions of a murder. Bigamy, perjury, deceit—what hadn't she done! Richard, in her estimation, was not what he thought himself, a somewhat ordinary man in the forties whose life had already held poverty and disillusionment and wholesome disappointment, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... just missed assistin' at a case of bigamy," says I to the young preacher, as we was bringin' Aunt Tillie ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... be altogether superfluous to remind the reader how little of our present moral code is ruled by law. We have in England, it is true, certain laws prescribing the conditions of the marriage contract, penalties of a quite ferocious kind to prevent bigamy, and a few quite trivial disabilities put upon those illegitimately born. But there is no legal compulsion upon any one to marry now, and far less legal restriction upon irregular and careless parentage than would be put in any scientifically ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... the brute appetites that become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked by the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris being much more common than is generally supposed; but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more and more tightly about his heart, till reason at length was stifled. When Remonencq computed that the commission paid by himself and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... and that Lola's first husband, Captain James, was still alive. Armed with this knowledge, Miss Heald hurried off to the authorities, and, having "laid an information," had Lola Montez arrested for bigamy. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... man advanced in years, named David Simms, who was claimed by two wives, and nearly torn in pieces by them, was committed from Union Hall, on a charge of bigamy. ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travelers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Everything but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every Legend of ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... inquisitive with reference to my past history. In case of marriage, I will remove to Boston with my new husband: for not being divorced from Sydney, (how I hate that name!) I should be rendered liable to the charge of bigamy, if the fact of my second marriage should transpire.—On the other hand, leaving marriage entirely out of the question: As a young and lovely woman, residing alone, and not under the protection of male relatives, I shall attract the attention of wealthy ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... on the bedpost. Mr. Parkinson, however, being extremely anxious to revisit Mrs. Parkinson, in a materialised form after death, will not be satisfied till he has received from his wife a solemn promise that she will not marry again, such a marriage being, in his eyes, nothing more nor less than bigamy. Having received an assurance to this effect from her, Mr. Parkinson dies, his soul, according to the medium, being escorted to the spheres by 'a band of white-robed spirits.' This is the prologue. The next chapter is entitled 'Five Years After.' Violet Parkinson, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... repeated Edward; 'and if I only had the right—if I were her husband or brother, he should be convicted of bigamy yet.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... said Mr. Boxer, with great relish. "It ain't likely I'm going to give myself away like that; besides, it's agin the law for a man to criminate himself. You go on and start your bigamy case, and call old ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... a person becoming, without any fault of his, disqualified for having or acquiring a certain good: thus for being infected with leprosy a man is removed from the administration of the Church: and for bigamy, or through pronouncing a death sentence a man is hindered ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... I say, that you were committing bigamy; that the child whom you were professing to marry would not become your wife through that ceremony. I say that you knew all this at the time? Come, Mr. Mollett, answer me, if you do not wish me to have you dragged out of this by a policeman and taken ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... is no evidence of madness in anything she has done. She ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she left in the hope of finding a better. There is no madness in that. She committed the crime of bigamy, because by that crime she obtained fortune and position. There is no madness there. When she found herself in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. She employed intelligent means, and she carried out a conspiracy which required coolness and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... Mary had at length consented to our wedding. It was at this time that I began to be afraid. What I had laughed at in my heart as the Scotch episode, became real. I remember, too, that at that time I was engaged in a bigamy trial, and I remember the terms which the judge used concerning the man who was found guilty. Yet here was I, who had acted as junior counsel for the prosecution of this man, contemplating taking a woman to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking



Words linked to "Bigamy" :   wedlock, spousal relationship, union, bigamist, regulatory offense, statutory offense, matrimony, law, marriage, regulatory offence, bigamous, jurisprudence, statutory offence



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