serial polygamy

English

Noun

serial polygamy (usually uncountable, plural serial polygamies)

1. (derogatory) The practice of marrying and divorcing a succession of individual spouses.

   Coordinate term: polygamy (construable as hypernymous)

   Near-synonym: serial monogamy

   • 1980 December 26, Lynn Darling, “The Haunted Exile of Novelist Anthony Burgess”, in Washington Post, retrieved 22 May 2018:

     "In America, you have so much divorce—perhaps because adultery was once a capital crime. You've ended up with serial polygamy."

   • 1998 December 21, John Tierney, “The Big City: Capital Sweats As New York Swings”, in New York Times, retrieved 22 May 2018:

     More recently, men like Donald Trump and Ronald Perelman have adopted a new form of marriage, serial polygamy—many wives, one at a time—which is possibly the worst system of all.

   • 1999 March 14, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “The ring of truth”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 22 May 2018:

     Marriage can be a form of temporary concubinage, lightly initiated, easily ended. Instead of lifelong union, it is, for many newly-weds, an introduction to serial polygamy.

   • 2008 February, Monsignor Robert J. Dempsey, "The Catholic Church's Teaching About Same-Sex Marriage," Linacre Quarterly, vol. 75, pp. 74-75 (Google preview):

     [T]he widespread acceptance and frequency of divorce means that the bond of marriage is permanent only as long as you want it to be. Thus, state-sanctioned and socially accepted serial polygamy is now the order of the day.

Related terms

• serial polygamist