communal marriage

noun

1. group marriage.

Word History and Origins

Origin of communal marriage¹

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

Besides the evidence derived from the terms of relationship, other lines of reasoning indicate the former wide prevalence of communal marriage.

From Project Gutenberg

Nevertheless all those who have most closely studied the subject,451 and whose judgment is worth much more 359than mine, believe that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout the world, including the intermarriage of brothers and sisters.

From Project Gutenberg

Sir J. Lubbock, however, as we have seen, attributes the practice in chief part, to the former existence of communal marriage, and to the men having consequently captured 365women from other tribes to hold as their sole property.

From Project Gutenberg

In “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival,” David Kaiser, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, turns to those wild days in the waning years of the Vietnam War when anything seemed possible: communal marriage, living off the land, bringing down the military with flower power.

From New York Times

But at the time when communal marriage still existed—and in all probability it once existed everywhere—a tribe was subdivided into a number of groups—"gentes"—consanguineous on the mother's side, within which intermarrying was strictly forbidden.

From Project Gutenberg