Dictionary

connubial en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /kəˈnu.bi.əl/ (General-American)
• /kəˈnjuː.bi.əl/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• audio

Etymology

1650s, from Latin connūbiālis, from connūbium (“marriage, wedlock”) (variants of cōnūbiālis (“pertaining to wedlock”), from cōnūbium (“marriage, wedlock”)) from com- (“together”) (English com-) + nūbō (“marry, to take as husband”) (from which nubile) from Proto-Indo-European *snewbʰ- (“to marry, to wed”).

Meanings

1. Of or relating to the state of being married.
   • A lady, wearing a plumed hat, and her dark-spectacled husband were sitting in connubial silence on the davenport; […] 1957 March 7, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 7.1, in Pnin, Heinemann, page 175:
   • "For my part," continued the Duke of Wharton, "I hold that the connubial system of this country is a complete mistake. The only happy marriages I ever heard of are those in some Eastern story I once read, where the king marries a new wife every night, and cuts off her head in the morning." 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 179–180:
   • Not gyved with connubial relations, I entered upon my migration entirely isolated, with the exception of a canine quadruped whose mordacious, latrant, lusorious, and venatic qualities, are without parity. 1856, Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant, in the East, page 13:

Forms

Deriveds

connubialism · postconnubial · unconnubial · preconnubial · nonconnubial · connubially · connubiality

Relateds

nuptials · nuptial · nubile

Synonyms

conjugal