English

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Etymology

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From Middle English dowarye, dowerie, from Anglo-Norman dowarie, douarie, from Old French douaire, from Medieval Latin dōtārium, from Latin dōs.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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dowry (countable and uncountable, plural dowries)

  1. Payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.[1]
  2. (less common) Payment by the groom or his family to the bride's family: bride price.
    • 2009, Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi, page 125:
      The family of the groom makes sure the new couple has a house to live in and land to cultivate; they will also pay for the dowry (crucial, for without dowry the new father has no rights over his children; Trouwborst 1962: 136ff.)
  3. (obsolete) Dower.
  4. A natural gift or talent.
  5. (informal) A large amount.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of E. M. Forster to this entry?)
    But no palace had so fair a ceiling; for from the wooden beams were suspended a whole dowry of copper vessels—pails, cauldrons, water pots, of every colour from lustrous black to the palest pink.

Antonyms

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Hypernyms

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Hyponyms

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Translations

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References

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  • (large amount): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

Verb

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dowry (third-person singular simple present dowries, present participle dowrying, simple past and past participle dowried)

  1. To bestow a dowry upon.
    • 1999, Judith Everard, Michael C. E. Jones, Charters Duchess Constance Br, page xvi:
    • 2013, Noreen Giffney, Margrit Shildrick, Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, page 62:
    • 1911, Aida Rodman De Milt, Ways and Days Out of London, page 108:
      1976, Graham Anderson, Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction, Page 19

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Gary Ferraro & Susan Andreatta, Cultural Anthropology, 8th edn. (Belmont, Cal: Wadsworth, 2010), 223.

Anagrams

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Middle English

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Noun

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dowry

  1. Alternative form of dowarye