dowry
Other forms: dowries
In some cultures, the bride or her family pays a certain amount of money or property to the groom when a couple is married. This payment is called a dowry.
Traditionally, a woman's family offered a dowry to potential husbands in order to make the match more attractive to the man and his family. The word dowry can actually mean "payment," but it can also refer to whatever property or savings a woman herself brings into a marriage. The Latin word dotare is the root of dowry, and it means "to endow or to portion out."
-
money or property brought by a woman to her husband at marriage
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing dowry
A celebrated classic of the graphic novel form, Maus explores a man's relationship with his Holocaust-survivor father and with history itself.
In this memoir, presented in graphic form, Marjane Satrapi describes growing up during the Iranian revolution.
In the early 1900s, a young boy leaves China to join his father in San Francisco, where they work to build a flying machine.