Once in a while I send "Word(s) of the Day" to my family. I'm in school and am enjoying the learning process so I share some of what I learn with those that I feel will enjoy, or put up with, my rants. I thought this was interesting enough to post. So, here we go. When I was younger, I had often thought of what the oposite gender role of a polygamist would be thinking that the word referred to a man with multiple wifes. I played around with the word molygamy, giving reference and associating it with (at least in my young mind) Patriarchal (male) and Matriachal (female) terms, as being the opposite gender role. However, in doing a little follow up research and getting quite far off the topic from the research paper I should have been writing the other night, I found a simplified explanation for these multi-marital relationship terms. Here are the three words and definitions that answered my conundrum.
Polygamy is when a person in general has more than one spouse.
Polygyny is when a man has more than one wife.
Polyandry is when a woman has more than one husband.
Polygyny is when a man has more than one wife.
Polyandry is when a woman has more than one husband.
This also incites discusions on how the word polygamy stuck. Why don't we in the LDS church use the more correct term of Polygyny when talking about church history since we don't have anything in the church's history that deals with women having multiple husbands? It's not that important. Just a thought. Here are some more marital terms if you want to fully confuse, and in some cases disgust yourself. Like I said, WORDS of the day!!
Polyamory · Polyandry · Polygy
Some of these are in reference to relationships in certain animal social behaviors, but I found one mention (not in any of these links) of people starting to use some of these terms in their own lives to justify immoral lifestyles. It amazes me how the adversary has tricked so many into thinking "if the animals are doing it, it must be natural and therefore OK." Bleh! Sign of the times.
