A.Word.A.Day --polyandry

A.Word.A.Day

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Sep 16, 2024

This week’s theme
Words made with combining forms

This week’s words
polyandry
hypernym
arthroplasty
neophile
hierophant

Draupadi and her five brother husbands

Art: Raja Ravi Varma, 1910

Previous week’s theme
Words with all the vowels

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Playing with words is like playing in a giant Legoland -- The admission is free and you get an unlimited supply of blocks we call combining forms, for example poly-, hyper-, -phobia, etc. You get to mix and match, plug and unplug, combine and decombine them.

You can combine more than two pieces as a kind of verbal polygamy (no judgment here). See this 45-letter word that resulted from an orgy of eight combining forms: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

This week we’ll feature words made by connecting two combining forms. We are going to be using the following combining forms, though not necessarily in that order:

poly- (many), neo- (new), hyper- (over, above), hiero- (sacred, priestly), arthro- (joint),
-andry (male), -plasty (formation), -phile (lover), -nym (name), -phant (one who shows).

What can you make by joining two or more of these? Share on our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org. As always, include your location.

polyandry

PRONUNCIATION:

(POL-ee-an-dree)

MEANING:

noun: The practice of having multiple husbands or male mates at the same time.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek poly- (many) + -andry (male). Earliest documented use: 1680.

USAGE:

“The better parts of the culture had to be preserved. That included, for [Tashi Tsering], the practice of polyandry, by which his mother had slept contentedly with two brothers, one upstairs and one down, and he had never cared which man his father was.”
Between Two Worlds; The Economist (London, UK); Dec 20, 2014.

See more usage examples of polyandry in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are? -Laurence J. Peter, educator and author (16 Sep 1919-1990)

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