Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 December 12

= December 12 =

One spouse, game over
Is there a term, in anthropology or otherwise, for societies in which any individual only gets one bite at the cherry? I know about the obsolete Sati (practice), i.e. that a widow was culturally pressured to follow her husband to the grave; I believe that re-marriage is still frowned upon in Hinduism. On the other hand, plenty of cultures have some form of widow inheritance, which is on the spectrum of arranged marriage -- forced marriage: I've just found the version in the early Protestant Church. Partly these rules about re-marrying (or not) are about sexual norms and celibacy, but there's also the related question of how additional children would affect the inheritance of goods and land. So there might be a society that didn't mind about the sex, as long as the new relationship wasn't formalised by marriage, and preferably with no babies to be recognised or discarded. What are the words for these possible social arrangements? And what about those species of animals that supposedly mate for life, and "die of heartbreak" (fail to find another partner) when their "first love" dies - what's the terminology for that? (Refdesk: Language, as I'm asking for words. Science, for animals. Humanities, for humans. OK, just stick it in Misc.) Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think in anthropology this would be discussed as the topic of widow remarriage. (Widower remarriage is unlikely to have received the same attention.) Unfortunately our article on the topic redirects to Women in Hinduism. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I am sure I read somewhere that the technical term for being married to the same person for life is called monotony. Wymspen (talk) 20:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I prefer Oscar Wilde's perspective: Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  04:10, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's little known outside the legal profession, but while "bigamy" is the state of having two wives, the technical term for having three wives is "trigamy". --Shirt58 (talk) 04:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Jay Leno once said that the drawback to having three wives is "having three mothers-in-law." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:29, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Five million articles, and still so much of human knowledge and culture is missing. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 00:57, 18 December 2016 (UTC)