Glossary of Relationship Terms

Marriage, Love Relationships

& Polykoity

By

Norman Elliott Anderson

A

Table of Contents
Introduction
- A -	- H -	O	U
- B -	- I -	- P -	- V -
- C -	J	Q	W
- D -	K	- R -	X
- E -	- L -	- S-Si -	Y
F	- M -	- Sk-Sz -	Z
- G -	- N -	- T -	©
Feedback opportunity

A:

See scarlet letter.

abode effect:

The impact of residential architecture on domestic relationships; the influence of a dwelling or dwellings in general on family life.

Comment: I coined the phrase in June of 2006, after finding no term for the sense and discovering that "domicile effect" was already taken by the credit rating industry.

See also feng shui love, household architectonics, household architecture, household proxemics, interpersonal enhancement architecture, relationship ecology, residence-shaped household.

Related terms beyond the scope of this glossary: anthropology of architecture, architectural psychology, environmental psychology.

abomination:

1. A detestable, abhorent, loathesome, or revolting object, behavior, or person.

• ba'ash (1 Samuel 13:4 - "Israel had become odious to the Philistines");
• zaʻam (Micah 6:10 - "a short measure that is cursed"; with regard to the subject matter of this Glossary, note zaʻam in Proverbs 22:14 in reference to a man with an adulteress);
• piggul (e.g. Leviticus 7:18 - three-day old sacrificed flesh for a peace offering "shall be an offensive thing");
• shaqats (Leviticus 11:11 - regarding water creatures without fins or scales, "their carcasses you shall detest");
• sheqets (e.g. Leviticus 11:10 - regarding water creatures without fins or scales, "they are detestable things to you"); and,
  
• shiqquts (e.g. Deuteronomy 29:17(16) - "you have seen their abominations and their idols"; but, in the context of this Glossary, note especially Jeremiah 13:27, where association is made with adulteries and prostitution; also Ezekiel 20:30 and Nahum 3:6, where association is made with the metaphor of harlotry).

• What was an abomination (toeba) for the Egyptians might be quite otherwise for the Israelites (Genesis 43:32; 46:34; Exodus 8:26; compare ba'ash at 1 Samuel 13:4);
• King David's command was abhorrent (taab) to Joab (1 Chronicles 21:6; however, Joab's attitude was confirmed by God in verse 7);
  
• Job is abhorred (taab) by his very clothes (Job 9:31), by his associates (Job 19:19), and by fools (30:10);
  
• A good man could become an abomination (toeba) to his acquaintances (Psalm 88:8);
• Fools have abhorred (taab) all kinds of food (Psalm 107:18);
• Departing from evil is an abomination (toeba) for fools (Proverbs 13:19);
• An unjust person is an abomination (toeba) to the righteous, whereas an upright person is an abomination (toebah) to the wicked (Proverbs 29:27); 
• A deceased king may be abhorred (taab) by his nation (Isaiah 14:19);
• The one chosen by God is abhorred (taab) by the nation (Isaiah 49:7);
  
• The person who speaks with integrity is abhorred (taab) by some (Amos 5:10); and,
  
• Justice was abhorred (taab) by certain rulers of the house of Israel (Micah 3:9).

• Godliness is an abomination (bdelugma) to a sinner (Sirach 1:25, where bdelugma may be a Greek translation of toeba);
  
• A person's appearance might inspire loathing (taab in Hebrew Sirach 11:2);
  
• A poor person is an abomination (toeba) to a rich one (Hebrew Sirach 13:20).
• The generation of wrath loathed (taab) those who lived pure lives (Dead Sea scrolls, CD 1:21);
• There are those who despise (taab) the Law (CD 2:6);
  
• Truth is an abomination (toeba) to injustice, and injustice is an abomination (toeba) to truth (Dead Sea scrolls, 1QS 4:17); and,
• Insofar as someone participates in evil, that person abominates (taab) truth (1QS 4:25).
  

• God's own inheritance, that is, the Israelites themselves, in Psalm 106:40 (taab);
• Sacrifice, in Proverbs 21:27 (toeba);
• Prayer, in Proverbs 28:9 (toeba);
• Incense, in Isaiah 1:13 (toeba);
• The land of Palestine itself, in Jeremiah 2:7 (toeba); and,
  
• Jerusalem's beauty, in Ezekiel 16:25 (taab).

• The sexual regulations and offering children to Molech, in Leviticus 18 (toeba);
• Idolatry, at Deuteronomy 7:17-26 (toeba);
• Making one's children pass through the fire, divination, and such, in Deuteronomy 18:9-12 (toeba); and,
• Taking back an ex-wife under certain conditions, in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (toeba).

x bdelugma.

x Bible.

x Greek terms.

x Hebrew terms.

x taab.

x toebah.

absolute code:

The principle of not exposing another person's sexuality, for instance, his or her homosexuality, to anyone capable of hurting that person because of it, such as a family member or employer.

See also ask-and-tell eroticism; break-up rules; closeted; code; code of silence; don't ask, don't tell; kiss and tell; moral code; rules of adultery; sexual etiquette; tell all; use sex as a weapon.

absolutism:

See moral absolutism.

abstinence:

Refraining from an activity, the reference often being to sexual activity with others. The point is usually:

• to prevent unwanted pregnancy, contraception being an alternative;
• to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, safer sex practices, such as condom use and sexual exclusivity, being alternatives; and/or,
• to preserve sexual purity for holy matrimony.

Not to be confused with celibacy (q.v.) or chastity (q.v.; note especially the quotation under "chastity," which illustrates one of the ways that abstinence and chastity are sometimes distinguished). Contrast incontinence (q.v.). See also abstinence only, abstinence pledge, abstinence plus, accubitus, agenobiosis, ATM, born-again virginity, consequences of sex outside of marriage, continence, demi-vierge, diasteunia, family values, mariage blanc, master of (one's) domain, nonogamy, no sex outside of marriage, safe sex, secondary virginity, sexual purity, traditional morality, white marriage.

abstinence only:

Waiting until one is in a long-term monogamous relationship (ideally monogamous marriage) before engaging in sexual activity, this as the sole method for avoiding both unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Comment: Discussions related to government policy, sex education, or religious attitudes are the usual venues in which the term is used.

Generally the point of the "only" is (a) to promote sexual purity; (b) to ensure effectiveness, provided abstinence is adhered to strictly; and/or (c) to avoid conflicting messages, since (in the minds of some) to teach safe-sex practices is both to enable sexual activity without significant fear of consequences and to imply that, in that case, sex outside of marriage is okay, which undermines certain religious and socially conservative teachings.

Contrast abstinence plus (q.v.). See also abstinence, family values.

abstinence pledge:

A commitment to abstain from sexual contact until marriage, or the words to that effect.

See also abstinence, chastity circle, condom commitment, family values, purity ball, traditional morality, true love pledge, virginity pledge.

Abstinence Pledge Card (Scott & White)
Starting today, I ____________________ pledge to abstain from sexual activity until marriage, as this is the only proven way to protect myself from out-of-wedlock pregnancy and STDs. I am Worth the Wait®. (sign here) ____________________ (date) ____________________
Abstinence Pledge Card ([Temple, Tex.]: Worth the Wait®, Scott & White Sex Education Program, [between 1996 and 2005]): http://www.worththewait.org/teens/pledgecard.html

Love is Patient: Abstinence Pledge Card
Why I am waiting for marriage So I can be free to: Develop healthy friendships Plan for the future Think clearly Give my purity to my future spouse Respect myself and others So I can be free from: Guilt Rejection Sexually transmitted diseases Pregnancy An abortion decision A bad reputation Being used Love is patient Signed ____________________ Date ____________________ Love waits
Found at the Frontlines.org site. "This product was added to our catalog on Friday 22 October, 2004."

abstinence plus:

Having in one's (metaphorical) toolkit of methods for avoiding unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases not only abstinence (q.v.) but also so-called "safe sex" methods, such as the use of condoms should sexual activity occur.

Comment: Discussions related to government policy, sex education, or religious attitudes are the usual venues in which the term is used.

Contrast abstinence only (q.v.). See also safe sex.

abundant love principle:

The idea that some people can truly and fully love more than one person at a time in a romantic way without depriving any of an essential connection, much as one can love more than one child or more than one friend.

Comments: Among the closely associated ideas is that any sense of deprivation on the part of a person loved would be due simply to the non-satisfaction of inculcated expectations or a limitation of resources, such as time, and that strategies are available for addressing such situations.

The abundant love principle is commonly accepted in polyamorous circles but tends to be alien to monogamy-only circles.

Contrast starvation economy (q.v.) and zero-sum view of love (q.v.). See also heart-swapping, hot and cool sex, in love, love, love more than one person at a time, monogamism, monogamy-only position, non-monogamy position, polyamory, resource dilution hypothesis, spiritual polyamory, utopian swinging.

abuse, as in "an abuse":

1. Subjection of a person to violence, psychological cruelty, or damaging physical neglect, especially when such subjection is persistent.

2. Subjection of a person who is under one's power or protective care to an exploitative or detrimental sexual involvement, as when the involvement does not or cannot, either intrinsically or by inexorable social definition, transcend a structural inequity (the inequities sometimes built into the institution of marriage aside). The usual term for this is "sexual abuse."

See also cruelty, domestic violence, dysfunctional relationship, love-trouble, marital rape, mariticide, maritodespotism, martyred spouse, punishment through marriage, ran-tan, sexual immorality, spousal homicide, toxic relationship, uxoricide, uxorodespotism, viricide, wife abuse.

abuse, as in "to abuse":

1. To subject a person to violence, psychological cruelty, or damaging physical neglect, especially to do so persistently.

2. In the phrase, "to abuse sexually," to subject a person who is under one's power or protective care to an exploitative or detrimental sexual involvement, as when the involvement does not or cannot, either intrinsically or by inexorable social definition, transcend a structural inequity other than a possible marital one.

3. To wrong a person by infidelity.

4. To cuckold (q.v.) or cuckquean a person.

5. In the phrase, "to abuse his (or her) bed," to seduce that person's spouse.

See also batter, cuckold, cuckquean, infidelity, play with fire, seduce, unfaithfulness, use sex as a weapon.

acceptive phase:

The second of three stages of an erotosexual relationship, the stage of mutual acceptance for mating.

See also adectia, budding relationship, chemistry of love, conceptive phase, courtship, erotosexual, in love, mature love, new relationship energy, proceptive phase, romantic love, wooing.

accept (someone's) hand:

To give an affirmative answer in response to a marriage proposal put to oneself; to willingly become engaged to a person.

See also affiance, ask for (someone's) hand in marriage, become engaged.

accouplement:

1. A pairing.

2. A marital union of two people.

See also couple, marriage.

accubitus (Latin):

1. Reclining for a meal; taking one's place at a table (the ancient Roman reclining position assumed).

2. As an English language medical term: Lying beside each other, but without engaging in sexual activity.

See also abstinence, adektia, agenobiosis, diasteunia, drone, mariage blanc, white marriage. intramarital chastity, involuntary celibacy, sexless love, sexless marriage, subintroducta, syneisaktism.

x Latin terms.

ace:

A person who lacks interest in sexual interaction and prefers sexual solitude; an asexual person.

See amoeba, asexual, autosexual.

ace of spades:

A widow (q.v.).

Source: Lexicon Balatronicum: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence, compiled originally by Captain [Francis] Grose, and now considerably altered and enlarged, with the modern changes and improvements, by a member of the Whip Club [Hewson Clarke], assisted by Hell-Fire Dick, and James Gordon ...; and William Soames ... (London: Printed for C. Chappel, 1811).

aching heart:

See heartache.

Acidalian knot:

See girdle of Venus.

Acoli terms:

See headdress keeper (wer pa lawino).

actaeon:

To cuckold.

Comment: In Greek mythology, the goddess Artemis (equivalent to the Roman Diana) turned the hunter Actaeon into a stag. The use of his name as a verb then is a play upon being "horned."

See also cuckold.

action on the side:

1. Sexual activity with one or more persons other than one's regular sex partner.

2. The person or persons, other than one's regular sex partner, with whom one engages in sexual activity.

See also adultery, alternate squeeze, alternative dating, backstreet mistress, cheat, dalliance, extramarital sex, extramural sexual affair, extra-pair copulation, infidelity, intrigue, liaison, multilateral sexuality, unfaithfulness; cicisbeo, lover, mistress, side girl, side squeeze.

active-passive split:

A difference in attitudes, especially culturally engendered attitudes, towards the penetrating (that is, active) and penetrated (that is, passive) partners in sex acts, ordinarily in reference to males with each other, whereby a passive male is thought to be perverted, since acting like a female, and an active male is understood to retain his manhood, since he is performing as if with a female.

See also arsenokoitês, "as with womankind," catamite, cinaedus, double standard, gay male, gugusse, gunsel, homosexuality, man-boy love, pathic, pederasty, perversion, sexism, sexual chauvinism, sexual mores, sodomite.

Adam's rib:

1. According to the second creation account in the biblical book of Genesis, the material from which the first woman was made. Some take this account literally, some take it figuratively or as myth.

2. Women generally.

3. A man's wife.

Comment: The term has sometimes been used to imply that a wife is to be subordinate to her husband or that women generally ought to be subordinate to men generally, although there is much more to be said theologically both about the relation of a husband and wife and about the relation of women generally to men generally.

See also androgyne archetype, "head of the wife," helpmeet, Lilith, "one flesh," paradisal marriage, prelapsarian marriage.

x myths.

Genesis 2:21-22, the Source behind the Term, "Adam's Rib" (as translated in the New Jerusalem Bible, 1985)
Then, Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And, while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh up again forthwith. Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.

addict:

See romance junky, sex addict.

addiction to love:

See love addiction.

addiction to pornography:

See porn addiction.

addiction to relationships:

See relationship addiction.

addiction to sex:

See sexual addiction.

adectia:

The unwillingness or inability of a woman to accept a man for sexual intercourse.

See also acceptive phase, accubitus, drone, involuntary celibacy, uxorovalent.

Related term beyond the scope of this glossary: inhibited sexual desire (ISD).

adelphic polyandry:

The practice on the part of a woman of having more than one male mate at a time, when her mates are brothers of one another, particularly when this is consonant with custom.

See also adelphogamy, fraternal polyandry, polyandry, sororal polygyny.

adelphogamist:

1. A participant in adelphogamy.

2. An advocate or supporter of adelphogamy.

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "adelphogamy," so here included.

See also adelphogamy.

adelphogamous:

Pertaining to adelphogamy.

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "adelphogamy," so here included.

See also adelphogamy.

adelphogamy:

1. A marriage in which brothers share one or more wives in common.

2. A brother-sister mating.

See also adelphic polyandry, adelphogamist, adelphogamous, brother-sister marriage, fraternal polyandry, -gamy, incest.

ad hoc union:

An impromptu rather than a traditional joining together in a marital or marital-like relationship due to an unusual situation, such as being stranded together.

See also cohabitation, common law marriage, living together, marriage, paperless marriage, union.

admiration:

1. High regard; great respect.

2. A wondering, with pleasure, at excellence.

3. An object of wonder and high regard, as in, "she was the admiration of all."

4. The noticing of someone as a potentially acceptable mate; a response to a person that can potentially lead to or be an early stage of falling in love.

See also admire, crystallization, enchantment, esteem, in love, love, proceptive phase, propassion, respect, zsa zsa zsu.

Quotations from Jane Austen Illustrating "Admiration"
[Mr Darcy]: A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
From the novel: Pride and Prejudice, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2003): chapter 6, p. 42; cf. chapter 24, p. 176. Originally published: Pride and Prejudice: A Novel ..., by the author of "Sense and Sensibility" (London: T. Egerton, 1813).
... Captain Wentworth was not in love with either [Louisa or Henrietta Musgrove]. They were more in love with him; yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some.
From the novel: Persuasion, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2004): chapter 10, p. 100. Originally published posthumously in: Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion, by the author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield-Park," &c.; with a biographical notice of the author [by her brother, Henry Austen] (London: John Murray, 1818).

admire:

1. To regard highly.

2. To wonder at and be pleased with the excellence of something or someone.

3. To notice as a desirable mate, whether consciously or not.

See also admiration, adore, esteem, like, love, place on a pedestal, respect, take a shine to, worship one's spouse.

Quotation from Jane Austen Illustrating "Admire"
[Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet]: 'In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.'
From the novel: Pride and Prejudice, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2003): chapter 34, p. 243. Originally published: Pride and Prejudice: A Novel ..., by the author of "Sense and Sensibility" (London: T. Egerton, 1813).

admixture with sexuality:

See unwelcome admixture with sexuality.

'adon (Hebrew):

See lord.

adoption:

Bringing into full-fledged family membership; giving family status to someone.

Comment: Most often the term is used for accepting the full responsibility, typically with another adult, for parenting a child who is not one's own biological offspring; but it can be more broadly applied to encompass, for instance, bringing an unrelated adult into a family.

See also affinity, blood brother, family, family of choice, forbidden degrees, god parent, incest, kinship, natural affinity, new family, snowflake baby, water sibling.

adoration-lust:

Overwhelming desire to treat a lover, would-be lover, or mate as a deity deserving of one's worship.

See also adore, dulia, Frauendienst, gyniolatry, husband worship, lust, pedestalism, place on a pedestal, princesse lointaine, sex god, sex goddess, wife worship.

Quotation from D. H. Lawrence Illustrating "Adoration-Lust"
[Page 52, the character Basil Apsley, to his wife, Daphne]: "... you perfect child! But that is the beauty of a woman like you: you are so superb and beyond worship, and then such an exquisite naïve child. Who could help worshipping you and loving you: immortal and mortal together. What, you want the thimble? Here! Wonderful, wonderful white fingers. Ah, darling, you are more goddess than child, you long, limber Isis with sacred hands. White, white, and immortal! Don't tell me your hands could die, darling: your wonderful Proserpine fingers. They are immortal as February and snowdrops. If you lift your hands the spring comes. I can't help kneeling before you, darling. I am no more than a sacrifice to you, an offering. I wish I could die in giving myself to you, give you all my blood on your altar, for ever." ... He took her hand and rose to his feet in that curious priestly ecstasy which made him more than a man or a soldier, far, far more than a lover to her. Nevertheless his home-coming made her begin to be ill again. Afterwards, after his love, she had to bear herself in torment. To her shame and her heaviness, she knew she was not strong enough, or pure enough, to bear this awful [53] outpouring adoration-lust. It was not her fault she felt weak and fretful afterwards, as if she wanted to cry and be fretful and petulent, wanted someone to save her. She could not turn to Basil, her husband. After his ecstasy of adoration-lust for her, she recoiled from him. Alas, she was not the goddess, the superb person he named her. She was flawed with the fatal humility of her age. She could not harden her heart and burn her soul pure of this humility, this misgiving. She could not finally believe in her own woman-godhead -- only in her own female mortality.
From: The Ladybird, by D. H. Lawrence (London: Martin Secker, 1923): pp. 52-53.

adore:

1. To love with every fiber of one's being, especially in such a way that the one being loved is placed above all else.

2. To admire the qualities of and to love another.

3. To like a lot.

4. To worship as or as though a divine being.

See also admire, adoration-lust, cherish, dote, dulia, gyniolatry, husband worship, like, love, pedestalism, place on a pedestal, wife worship, worship one's spouse.

adorer:

Someone who adores another.

See also adore, lover.

Quotation from Shakespeare Illustrating "Adorer"
POSTHUMUS LEONATUS [of his wife, Imogen]. ... I profess myself her adorer, not her friend.
From: William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (circa 1609-1610): Act 1, Scene 4, line 74.

adult buffet:

Group sex; having a variety of grown people with whom to engage in sexual activity and the ability to pick and choose among them.

See also group sex.

adulter:

To commit adultery, by thought or deed.

Comment: Poetical.

See also adultery.

adulterer:

1. A person who commits adultery.

2. When distinguished from an adulteress, a man who commits adultery.

See also adulteress, adultery, bedswerver, bull, cheat, half-worker, homewrecker, hothusband, illicit lover, mate poacher, pornos, scarlet letter, sex cheat, spousebreach, spousebreaker, two-timer.

adulteress:

A woman who commits adultery.

See also adulterer, adultery, bedswerver, cheat, cuckoldress, half-worker, homewrecker, hotwife, mate poacher, Pericope de Adultera, pornos, scarlet letter, sex cheat, slut wife, sotah, spousebreach, spousebreaker, tail-femme, two-timer, water of jealousy, whore.

adulterine:

1. Pertaining to or characterized by adultery.

2. Pertaining to or characterized by an undesirable mixing.

3. Born of adultery.

4. As a substantive, a child born of an adulteress (canon law).

Source for the fourth sense: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language, edited by Jack Lynch (Delray Beach, Fla.: Levenger Press, c2002).

See also adulterous, adultery, out of wedlock (which see for synonyms of the fourth sense).

adulterous:

Pertaining to or characterized by adultery (q.v.).

See also adulterine.

adultery:

1. In the Bible:

• At least with regard to Israelites: for a man, nefarious copulation with his fellow's wife; for a wife, nefarious copulation with a man other than her husband. See Leviticus 18:20; 20:10.
• Lusting after another's wife or, by way of a common misinterpretation, after a woman; said of a man. See Matthew 5:28. By extension (that is, going beyond the Bible), sexual lust on the part of anybody for anybody.
• Figuratively, faithlessness to God by means of idolatry. See, for example, Jeremiah 3:6-10 and Ezekiel 23:37.

2. In a culture or marital arrangement where sexual monogamy is presumptive:

• Voluntary copulation on the part of a person who is someone's spouse with someone other than his or her spouse.
• Concommitently, voluntary copulation with a person married to someone else. (In the view of many, this is not adultery if on the part of an unmarried person or, at least, an unmarried woman.)

3. Unfaithfulness to a marital commitment to restrict one's sex partners to one's spouse or spouses.

4. Violation of a culturally or maritally imposed boundary regarding either sexual contact outside of one's marriage or male-female contact outside of one's marriage.

5. A marriage fitting a type disapproved by one religionist or another, or the type itself, for example, perhaps interfaith marriage. This is called interpretative adultery, insofar as the disapproval is only inferred from and not explicitly stated in the scriptures of a religion of the book.

6. Any violation of sexual morals, especially if it is conceived of as placing sexual gratification ahead of obedience to God. (Note definition 1 above, the figurative sense: idolatry as adultery.)

7. Passionate love of one's own wife. For this, see Xystus the Pythagorian, as quoted below.

8. A bishop's dismissal of his diocese, "without unavoidable need or out of some apostolic or canonical reason for translation."¹ This is a form of spiritual adultery.

9. A church's acceptance of a bishop as its own while its rightful bishop is still alive.² This is a form of spiritual adultery.

10. A nun's breaking of her vows by engaging in sexual intercourse or entering into a human marriage, since she is spiritually married to Christ.³

11. Cynical definitions of adultery abound. To give an example: A married person's segregation of sex and property rights.

Comments: The core idea of adultery is the mixing of the approved and the unapproved -- for instance, approved semen and unapproved semen, a cultically pure sexual connection and a cultically impure one, or an appropriate loyalty or bond and an inappropriate one.

Since the commission of adultery is dependent upon the existence of a marital state, its precise definition depends in part upon a precise definition of marriage; and the definition of marriage is notoriously difficult. Even where prescriptive definitions of marriage abound, as they do in the United States, the marital status of many relationships is open to question; and, in any case, sociologists and ethicists, among others, may disregard those definitions and throw the net wider to include, for instance, prescriptively excluded polygamous marriages. Thus it might be said that a woman in a polygynous marriage who copulates with a man other than her husband is committing adultery in a moral sense (at least if she does so without her husband's okay), even if the marriage is prohibited under civil law.

The full scope of a definition of adultery in the fourth sense is also dependent upon cultural norms and intramarital understandings. To give some examples of how the scope of adultery is defined differently by different people:

• Sex hospitality in which a man shares his wife with a visitor is not regarded by all cultures or within every marriage as entailing adultery.
• Co-marital sex is not regarded within every marriage as adultery, although it may be condemned as such by some religious bodies.
• Non-procreative sexual activity and sexual activity other than penis-in-vagina intercourse (intravaginal coition) are not uniformly regarded in American culture as adultery (although see the Fisher quotation below).
• For some, adultery is the crossing of a particular line; an act either is or is not adultery. For others, there are gradients of adultery. (For an example of the latter idea, see the James Joyce quotation below.)
• Cybersex with a person other than one's marital partner is viewed by some as a new form of adultery and by others as beyond the application of traditional norms, in fact, in some cases, even as a traditional-morality-free solution to some problems common in traditional relationships, such as sexual incompatibility and sexual boredom.
• Given the shift of emphasis that has been occurring over recent centuries from inheritance rights and "legitimate" offspring to emotional bonds, the "adulteration" of those bonds has become an increasing issue for some; although, for such adulteration, the term that is usually used is "emotional infidelity."

In cultures that are morally pluralistic with regard to love and sexuality in the private sphere of life, as many cultures around the world now are, including North American culture, the precise scope of adultery (again, in the fourth sense) has become more and more a matter of subcultural and intramarital definition.

Adultery has been one of the biggest traditional issues of sexual morality, and these days ethicists have much on their plate to address about it.

References
1 The Collection in Seventy-Four Titles: A Canon Law Manual of the Gregorian Reform, translated and annotated by John Gilcrist (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980; in series: Mediaeval Sources in Translation; 22): titulus 25, capitula 186 = pp. 171-172. The collection dates from the latter part of the 11th century C.E. and is abbreviated 74T.
2 74T, tit. 25, cap. 186.
3 74T, tit. 56, cap. 252; cf. 254.

See also abuse, action on the side, adulter, adulterer, adulteress, adulterine, adulterous, affair, apistia, arsenokoitês, bestiality, betrayal, clandestine polygamy, comarital, commit adultery, consensual adultery, courtly love, criminal conversation, cuckold, cuckoldry, cuckquean, cyberadultery, cybersex partner, deceased wife's sister question, de facto polygamy, demi-vierge, double adultery, emotional infidelity, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, extramarital sex, extra-pair copulation, father's wife, first-cousin marriage, forbidden love, fornication, fortunate fall, Holiness Code, illicit love, incest, indiscretion, infidelity, interpretative adultery, intrigue, klepsigamy, lairwite, Lasterkatalog, Law and gospel, living in open and notorious adultery, lust, marriage, mate poaching, menstruant as forbidden, non-consensual adultery, offshore drilling, Oholah and Oholibah, out-of-marriage love affair, overlapping, Pericope de Adultera, porneia, rules of adultery, scarlet letter, Seventh Commandment, sex hospitality, sex scandal, sexual immorality, sexual morality, single adultery, sotah, spousebreach, spousebreak, stupration, traditional morality, unfaithfulness, venereal transgression, virtual adultery, water of jealousy, worship one's spouse.

x spiritual adultery.

Quotation from Xystus (or Sextus) the Pythagorian on Adultery
Omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est. "Any man who is too ardent a lover of his own wife is an adulterer"; or, as C. S. Lewis paraphrased it: "Passionate love of a man's own wife is adultery."
This aphorism by Xystus is quoted in a number of places prior to the invention of movable type, for instance, in Peter Lombard (circa 1100-1160), Sententiarum, Book 4, Distinction 31, Chapter 5, "De excusatione coitus." Thanks to Br. Alexis Bugnolo of the Franciscan Archive for the translation (email to me dated July 2, 2002). I changed his more literal "Every one" to "Any man."
The paraphrase is from: The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, by C. S. Lewis (London: Oxford University Press, 1936): p. 15.

Quotation from James Joyce Illustrating a Gradient Idea of Adultery
A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary [Rochfort], first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother.
From: Ulysses, [by] James Joyce (Revised ed. London: Bodley Head, 1969): p. 286. Ulysses was originally published in Paris by Shakespeare and Company in 1922.

Quotation from John Updike Illustrating "Adultery"
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
From the novel: Couples, [by] John Updike (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968; "A Borzoi Book"): p. 456

Quotation from Helen E. Fisher on Adultery
What constitutes adultery? Definitions vary. The Lozi of Africa do not associate adultery with intercourse. The Lozi say that if a man accompanies a married woman he is not related to as she walks along a path, or if he gives her a beer or some snuff, he has committed adultery. This sounds farfetched. But Americans do not always associate adultery with intercourse either. If an American businessman finds himself in a foreign city buying dinner for an attractive colleague and then performing every sexual act with her except copulation, he might think that he has been adulterous -- despite the lack of coitus. In fact, in a poll taken by People magazine in 1986, some 74 percent of the 750 respondents believed that one does not actually need to engage in intercourse to be unfaithful. Among the Kofyar of Nigeria, people define adultery quite differently. A woman who is dissatisfied with her husband but does not wish to divorce can take a legitimate extra lover who lives openly with her in her husband's homestead. Kofyar men are permitted the same privilege. And no one regards these extramarital relationships as adultery.
From: Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce, [by] Helen E. Fisher (New York: W. W. Norton, c1992): pp. 78-79.

adultery-toleration pact:

An agreement between marital partners to allow sexual freedom beyond the confines of the marriage, albeit perhaps with some restrictions. Such pacts are sometimes modified to adjust for emotional and psychological tolerances.

Comment: Attributed to Robert and Frances Binkley, 1929.

See also arrangement, boundary, comarital, condone, consensual adultery, household rules, hundred-mile rule, new adultery, open couple, open marriage, reconstituted marriage, rules of adultery, sexual nonexclusivity, sexual permissiveness, swing, swingers' moral code, veto rule.

advance (a) relationship:

1. To bring a relationship (q.v.) to a deeper level of intimacy; to grow more closely together.

2. To bring a relationship to a higher level of commitment; to take the next natural step in the development of a relationship.

See also move (a) relationship forward, take (it) to the next level.

adventitia dos (Latin):

In Roman law, a dowry brought by the bride that is derived from a source or sources other than the property of her father or paternal grandfather.

Contrast profectitia dos (q.v.). See also dos, dowry.

x Latin terms.

aeipathy:

1. Enduring passion.

2. A pining away.

See also cri de coeur, ghosts of relationships past, grief, heartache, let go, love, lovelorn, miss, pine away, withdrawal anguish.

affair:

1. A sexual relationship between two people who are neither married to one another nor in a committed love relationship together.

2. Any sexual relationship considered illicit.

3. A love relationship between two people who are neither married to one another nor in a committed love relationship together; an emotional involvement with someone who is or could become a sex partner.

4. A sexual relationship that is less than the central love relationship of one's life.

5. A euphemism for genitals, whether male or female; sometimes expressed as "affairs," as in William Shakespeare's Sonnets, 151.

6. In the phrase, "matrimonial affairs," matters pertaining to marriage, as in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813): chapter 27.

See also adultery, affair, affaire de coeur, affairette, affair of the heart, amour, amourette, carry on, cheap affair, cheap affair, cyber-affair, dalliance, direct-affront myth of affairs, escapade romantique, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, extramural sexual affair, extra-partner sex, extra-relationship sex, fling, fool around, illicit love, inappropriate relationship, indiscretion, Internet affair, intrigue, irregular connection, liaison, married at Finglesham Church, myth of affairs as symptomatic, offshore drilling, online affair, out-of-marriage love affair, play around, rebound affair, see-saw affair, seven-year itch, sex scandal, sexual relationship, thing, torrid affair, transitional affair, virtual affair; Lady Jane.

Quotation from Ruth Dickson Illustrating "Affair"
... the affair (and by this I mean an emotional involvment on your part, not a physical affair over which you maintain control) ...
From: Married Men Make the Best Lovers, by Ruth Dickson (Los Angeles, Calif: Sherbourne Press, c1967): p. 121.

Quotation from Cassandra King Illustrating "Affair"
I felt as though my breath had been knocked out of me. "You had an affair with John Marcus Vickery?" Augusta stared at me. "An affair? An affair is cheap and tawdry. What we have is not anything like that."
From the novel: The Sunday Wife, [by] Cassandra King (New York: Hyperion, c2002): p. 227. The italics are hers.

Quotation from the TV Series "Grey's Anatomy" Illustrating "Affair"
[Derek Shepherd, who is married to Addison, speaking to Richard Webber regarding Meredith Grey, whom Derek loves] Meredith, she's not an affair.
From: The American TV drama series, "Grey's Anatomy," Season 3, Episode 38, "I Am a Tree," written by Krista Vernoff, directed by Jeff Melman (first aired on the American Broadcasting Network, September 28, 2006).

affaire d'amour (French):

"Affair of love"; a love affair (q.v.).

x French terms.

affaire de coeur (French):

"Affair of the heart"; love affair.

See also affair, affair of the heart, heart, love affair, romantic love.

x French terms.

affairette:

A short affair (q.v.).

See also escapade romantique, expiration dating, fling, liaison.

Quotation from Armistead Maupin Illustrating "Affairette"
[Michael Toliver, a.k.a. "Mouse"] "[snip] Everybody wants a lover, right?" [Mona Ramsey] "Wrong." "O.K.... So almost everybody. Anyway, I thought I'd be snapped up in six months. At the very most!" "You were. Hundreds of times." "Not funny." "What about Robert?" "Affairettes don't count."
From the novel: Tales of the City, [by] Armistead Maupin (New York: Harper & Row, 1978; "Perennial Library"; in: Tales of the City Series; v. 1): p. 110; cf. 200. The snip is mine, the elision Maupin's.

affair of the flesh:

A relationship strictly sexual in nature, that is, without deep emotional bonds.

See also amourette, casual relationship, cheap affair, dalliance, fling, ludic love, sexual relationship.

x flesh.

affair of the heart:

1. A love relationship.

2. A matter of romantic emotions directed towards someone.

For lexical example, see under "womanizer."

See also affair, affaire de coeur, heart, love affair, love relationship, romantic love.

affection:

Fondness; warm, tender feelings for someone, such as one's child, parent, friend, co-worker, lover, or partner; an enduring, usually quiet sort of love, especially as distinguished from sexually passionate types or aspects of love.

Comment: Like "feelings," often cast in the plural: "affections."

Affection is often associated with bonding and loyalty.

See also alienation of affections, amore, antipelargy, bond, chains of affection, companionate love, conjugal love, cupboard love, devotion, express love, fallacy of a cherished affection, familial love, family love, feeling for, fondness, friendship, gentle heart, give one's heart away, keep safe what [one is] to [somebody], like, long-term love, love, love dare, love more than one person at a time, love remembered, maritality, marital love, out of love, public display of affection, regard, sentiment, storgic love, tenderness, thing, tie that binds, token of affection, unconditional love, uxoriousness.

Quotation from Susan Ferrier Illustrating "Affections"
His character was as little calculated as his appearance to engage the affections of a young woman of delicacy and good sense.
From the novel: Marriage, [by] Susan Ferrier; with a new introduction by Rosemary Ashton (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books; [London]: Virago Press, 1986): chapter 14, p. 83. Originally published anonymously: Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood, 1818.

affectionate term:

See term of endearment.

affiance:

1. To engage to marry.

2. To betroth.

3. To arrange that a marriage between two particular people takes place.

See also accept (someone's) hand, affy, become engaged, betroth, fiancé, fiancée; go-between, marriage broker, matchmaker, proxenete, shadkahn.

affinal:

Pertaining to or characterized by affinity (q.v., especially in the first sense).

affine, as in "an affine":

A person closely related by marriage.

See also affine, affinity.

affine, as in "the two are affine":

Closely related (not necessarily by marriage).

See also affine, affinity.

affinity:

1. A kinship relation created by marriage, sexual union, or adoption and that is recognized by a family, culture, or religion. Any kinship obligation or marital impediment may or may not be continued past death or divorce, depending upon religious, cultural, or family mores; and those mores may vary according to the specific relation (see, for example, under deceased wife's sister question).

2. A spiritual connection or a sense thereof; a profound compatibility of souls.

Contrast the first sense with consanguinity (q.v.). See also adoption, affinal, affine (noun and verb), alliance, connaturality, diagramming kinship ties, digeneia, easy, father's wife, fellow feeling, forbidden degrees, incest, in-law, -in-law, kinship, lover-in-law, marriage, natural affinity, qatangun, step-, trigeneia; compatibility, communion, connection, elective affinity, Hauerwas's Law, made for each other, marriage of true minds, match made in heaven, Miss Right, Mister Right, Ms. Right, mystic betrothal, mystic marriage, propinquity, quality relationship, rival, seeble, sexual connection, sexual correspondence, soul mate, spiritual bride, spiritual connection, spiritual husband, spiritual intimacy, spiritual marriage, spiritual wife, true marriage of minds and bodies, vibe.

A Roman Catholic Definition of "Affinity" Quoted (Note that monogamy is assumed as the standard)
According to Canon 97 [Canon 109 in the 1983 edition] of the Code of Canon Law, affinity is, just as in modern civil codes, a personal bond arising from marriage whether consummated or not. This is a distinct departure from the old discipline according to which the relationship of affinity arose from carnal intercourse, whether licit or illicit. Affinity is contracted only between the husband and blood relatives of the wife, and between the wife and blood relatives of the husband. Therefore, no relationship of affinity exists between blood relatives of the husband and blood relatives of the wife, since affinity does not beget affinity (affinitas non parit affinitatem). This explains why no dispensation is required for a marriage of two sisters of one family to two brothers of another family.... As long as both marriage partners are alive, affinity remains a sort of quasi-relationship; upon the death of one of them, it becomes an impediment, which bars marriage between the widowed party and the blood relatives of the deceased spouse.
From: Dictionary of Moral Theology, compiled under the direction of Francesco Cardinal Roberti; edited under the direction of Monsignor Pietro Palazzini; translated from the second Italian edition under the direction of Henry J. Yannone (London: Burns & Oates, c1962): see under "Affinity," [signed] Bar. [Vittorio Bartoccetti], p. 49.

affy:

1. To become betrothed.

2. To become engaged.

3. To arrange that a marriage between two particular people takes place.

See also affiance, become engaged, betroth, fiancé, fiancée; go-between, marriage broker, matchmaker, proxenete, shadkahn.

against nature:

See unnatural.

agamist:

1. A person who rejects marriage for him or herself or who belongs to a group that rejects marriage.

2. A person who opposes the institution or institutionalization of marriage.

3. A participant in a social group in which there is no rule about marriage.

4. An unmarried person.

See also agamy, misogamist.

Quotation from E. Cobham Brewer Illustrating "Agamists"
Shakers. Certain agamists founded in North America by Ann Lee ...
From: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words That Have a Tale to Tell, by E. Cobham Brewer (New edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged; to which is added a concise bibliography of English literature. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, c1898): p. 1127.

agamous:

1. Pertaining to or characterized by agamy.

2. Unmarried.

See also agamy, unmarried.

agamy:

1. Rejection of the institution of marriage, as by a religious sect.

2. Absence of a state of marriage.

3. The non-institutionalization and non-recognition of marriage in a given society.

4. Social indifference to both endogamy and exogamy; absence of any rule about marriage on the part of a social group about whom its members may or may not marry.

Comment: The last sense is attributed, by George A. Theodorson and Achilles G. Theodorson in A Modern Dictionary of Sociology (1970, c1969), to Robert H. Lowie. They cite his Social Organization (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950).

See also agamist, agamy, -gamy, marriagefree.

agapê or agape (Greek):

Agapic love (q.v.); charitable love.

See agapic love, erôs, lovebird.

Quotation from Charles Williams (1886-1945) Illustrating "Agape"
By virtue of the Incarnation Eros and Agape are no longer divided, though they may be again the next moment.
From: "One Way of Love," in: The Image of the City and Other Essays, [by] Charles Williams; selected by Anne Ridler, with a critical introduction (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1958): pp. [159]-161, specifically p. 161. Originally published as a Time and Tide review of Passion and Society, by Denis de Rougemont (1940).

agapemone:

A free-love or mate-swapping group, community, or institution.

Comment: A commune of that name and reputation was founded at Spaxton, England circa 1849.

See also free love, mate swapping, partner sharing.

agapet:

A womanizer; a man who pursues women for sexual pleasure.

See also bedhopper, Casanova, crumpet man, Don Juan, fribbler, gallant, gay deceiver, gay spark, God's gift to women, jock, ladies' man, lady-killer, Lothario, loverboy, lovertine, macadam, macadamo, make-out artist, masher, multimitus, philanderer, pick up artist, playboy, promiscuity, rake, roué, satyr, seducer, serial philandering, sex maniac, sexual varietism, skate, skirt-chaser, smellsmock, stud, vert galant, wolf, womanizer.

agapêtê; plural, agapêtai (Greek) or agapetae (Latinized):

"Beloved"; a woman of the early church who lived with a celibate man (or men), without being formally married to him (or to any of them).

Comment: One of the earliest descriptions, if not the earliest description of agapêtai (albeit in the context of a parable and without use of the term) is found in the Shepherd of Hermas (2nd century), Similitude 9:10-11.

Another Greek term with the same meaning is syneisaktos. The Latin equivalent is subintroducta, which see for more information.

See also agapêtos, agenobiosis, celibate, celibate marriage, diasteunia, double monastery, intramarital chastity, mariage blanc, mystic betrothal, sexless love, spiritual bride, spiritual marriage, spiritual wife, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.

x Greek terms.

x Latin terms.

agapêtos; plural, agapêtoi (Greek) or agapeti (Latinized):

"Beloved"; a man of the early church who was pledged to celibacy and who lived with one or more women.

See also agapêtê, agenobiosis, celibate, celibate marriage, diasteunia, double monastery, intramarital chastity, sexless love, mariage blanc, mystic betrothal, sexless love, spiritual husband, spiritual marriage, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.

x Greek terms.

x Latin terms.

agapic love or agapê (Greek):

1. An attitude and social bond whereby one refrains from treating another as one would not wish to be treated if he or she and treats another as one would wish to be treated if he or she, in fact, treating another as though one with that person, for instance, as a person would treat a well-bonded spouse.

2. The benevolent spirit and practice of charity; lovingkindness; good will.

3. A nurturing and cherishing love in which self-giving benefits the one or ones being loved and improves the whole of which one is a part, such as a marriage (see, for example, Ephesians 5:25-33).

4. A spiritual bond between two or more persons, especially one where sexual desire is absent, denied, or distinguished from it.

5. Devotion to God (note the verb, agapaô, in the Septuagint's version of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Joshua 22:5; cf. Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27).

6. In some Christian theology, the pure abiding spiritual quality that underlies the existence and coherence of the cosmos, that is identified as being of the essence of God (see, for example, 1 John 4:8, 16), and in which human beings are invited to participate as moral agents.

7. Altruism; selflessness in service of another.

Comment: Also called brotherly love and Christian love, although restricted neither to brothers, males, nor Christians.

Carefully contrast the first five senses with altruism (q.v.). See also agapê, amorization, being love, belief in love, believe in love, caritas, conjugal love, fellow feeling, forgiveness, give up on love, "Greater love hath no man ...," heart, law of love, loa, love, love commandments, love quotient, love practitioner, marital love, new morality, "one flesh," personalism, practice love, practice of love, relationalism, sacrificial love, sexless love, situation ethics, substituted love, tie that binds, unconditional love.

x brotherly love.

x Christian love.

x Greek terms.

age-gap relationship:

A romantic involvement in which the difference between the partners' ages varies widely from the norm.

See also alphamegamia, anilojuvenogamy, anisonogamia, cougar relationship, dysonogamia, gerontophilia, intergenerational relationship, Lolita, May-December romance, pussy-struck, rob the cradle, spring-autumn romance, sugar daddy, unnatural.

agenobiosis:

Spouses living together without engaging in sexual intercourse together, this by mutual consent.

See also abstinence, accubitus, agapêtê, agapêtos, celibate marriage, demi-vierge, diasteunia, drone, intramarital chastity, involuntary celibacy, mariage blanc, sexless marriage, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.

age of consent:

The time in life, generally as measured in years, when one's decision whether or not to undertake certain activities with another, such as sexual intercourse or marriage, is recognized, in law, then and thereafter as principally one's own responsibility.

See also child marriage, precocity of marriage.

agnate:

1. Related by male descent.

2. Related on the father's side.

Contrast enate (q.v.). See also cognate, kinship.

^hagneia (Greek word):

See purity.

agunah (Hebrew):

A woman whose husband has deserted her or has disappeared and who is restrained from remarrying until she shows a bill of divorce or proof of his death.

See also desertion, divorce, get, kiddushim, remarriage.

x Hebrew terms.

Aholah and Aholibah:

See Ohola and Oholibah.

AI:

1. Artificial insemination (q.v.).

2. Approach invitation (q.v.).

aiparik (Eskimo, Inuit):

"The second"; a partner in a spouse exchange.

Source: The Eskimo of North Alaska, by Norman A. Chance (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1966; in series: Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology): pp. 49, 103. Evidently Chance was speaking of the male participants as the partners in the exchange.

See also angutawkun, aypareek, aytpareik (the same word?), doused lights, nangsaegaek, nuliaqatigiit, partner, wife exchange.

x Eskimo terms.

ajois relationship (Kuikuro-Kalapalo):

An extramarital affair in a cultural context characterized by extramarital sexual freedom.

Comment: "Ajois" is a term from the Kuikuru of Brazil.

See also courtly love, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, mbuya relationship, out-of-marriage love affair, sacanagem.

x Kuikuro-Kalapalo terms.

Akkadian terms:

See erëbu marriage, kuzbu, sex-joy (rishatum).

à la façon du pays (French):

"According to the custom of the country," often in reference to marriage.

Comment: Typically the term is used when a person from France (or a country that borrows from the French language, like England) enters into a marriage that is subject only to the customs of another people and not of his or her home country.

See also country marriage, country wife, sleeping dictionary.

x French terms.

alcoholic jealousy:

Persistent suspicion that one's partner is being unfaithful and/or hostility towards a perceived rival, either or both due to chronic alcohol abuse.

See also alcoholic marriage, goat-drunk, jealousy.

alcoholic marriage:

A marriage (q.v.) in which one or each of the partners is given to alcohol abuse.

Source: The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage (New York: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 1992).

See also alcoholic jealousy, alcoholic paranoia, relationship parasite, white sergeant.

alcoholic paranoia:

Irrational conviction that one's partner has been unfaithful despite all evidence to the contrary, this due to chronic alcohol abuse.

See also alcoholic marriage, jealousy.

aleupaaktuat (Eskimo, Inuit):

Leaving one's wife in the care of a male ally while away for an extended period, and allowing him sexual rights to her during that period.

Source: "Spouse-Exchange among the North Alaskan Eskimo," [by] Robert F. Spencer, in: Marriage, Family, and Residence, edited by Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (1968): pp. [131]-144, specifically p. 140.

See also allupaareik, nangsaegaek, simmixsuat, wife lending.

x Eskimo terms.

Algonquian terms:

See sannup, squaw.

alienation of affections (legal term):

Deliberate and malicious interference with a marriage by a third party, interference that causes the sort of harm to a marital relationship for which a person is liable before the law, given a jurisdiction where the offense is actionable.

See also affection, conjugal rights, consortium, couple-buster, emotional infidelity, fall out of love, feel betrayed, heart balm statute, home wrecker, jock block, kill the feeling for each other, mate poaching, steal, thief of love.

alimony:

One or more court-ordered support payments to one's ex-spouse or to a spouse from whom one is separated.

See also alimony in gross, alimony pendente lite, alimony trust, allegation of faculties, break-up rules, child support, displaced homemaker, estovers, palimony, periodic alimony, permanent alimony.

x money.

alimony in gross:

Alimony (q.v.) paid in one lump sum, rather than in installments.

See also lump-sum alimony.

alimony pendente lite:

An allowance for one's spouse pending divorce or legal separation.

See also alimony.

alimony trust:

Part of a person's property that is held by a third party from which alimony (q.v.) is paid.

allegation:

Information filled in on a marriage license that one asserts to be true.

allegation of faculties:

A statement given, for the purpose of obtaining alimony (q.v.), regarding the extent of one's spouse's or ex-spouse's income, earning ability, and tangible property.

alliance:

1. A bond between two families created by way of the marriage of a member of each to each other.

2. A bond between family members because they are loyal members of the same family.

3. A special bond between certain members of a family.

4. A mutual allegiance, as between lovers or spouses.

5. An intangible linkage between unrelated individuals, even if only momentary.

6. A conjoining of efforts, by way of a pact, for the achievement of a common objective, such as defending against or defeating an opponent.

See also affinity, ally (noun and verb), bond, friendship, kinship, political marriage.

Quotation from Jane Austen Illustrating "Alliance"
All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.
From the novel: Persuasion, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2004): chapter 1, p. 12. Originally published posthumously in: Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion, by the author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield-Park," &c.; with a biographical notice of the author [by her brother, Henry Austen] (London: John Murray, 1818).

Quotations from D. H. Lawrence Illustrating "Alliance"
[67] Minette [Darrington] ... did not quite know her position. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald [Crich], and she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the men.
[191] The hot narrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent. The way they shut their doors, these married people, and shut themselves into their own exclusive alliance with each other, even in love, disgusted him [Rupert Birkin].
From the novel: Women in Love, [by] D. H. Lawrence; with a foreword by the author and an introduction by Richard Aldington (New York: Viking Press, 1960): chapter 6, p. 67; chapter 16, p. 191. Early editions: New York: Privately printed for subscribers only, 1920. London: Martin Secker, 1921.

alliance of bodies:

A partnership in which physical touch plays a significant and mutually acceptable role, as in marriage.

See also sexual partnership.

Quotation from Charles Williams Illustrating "Alliance of Their Bodies"
There Barbara [Rackstraw] had collapsed again into a seat, in which she was writhing and twisting, at intervals crying out still for Lionel [Rackstraw, her husband]. "But, my darling, I'm here," he said, tortured beyond any of his own visionary fears. "Can't you see me? Can't you feel me?" He took her hands. By the long alliance of their bodies, knit by innumerable light touches of impatience or of delight, some kind of bridge seemed to be established.
From the novel: War in Heaven, by Charles Williams (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., [1965], 1970 printing): chapter 11, p. 160. Originally published: London: Victor Gollancz, 1930. First American ed.: New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1949.

all men are the same:

See men are all the same.

all men to (me):

1. A human male conceived of as participatory in the archetype that represents the union of male and female.

2. A person being conceived as having all that one looks for from the totality of human males, he (or, in some cases, she) being completely sufficient.

3. A person who will play the part of any human male so as to satisfy his (or her) mate's taste for diversity.

See also all women to (me), androgyne archetype, husband, men are all the same, partner, roving eye.

allotriorasty:

Miscegenation (q.v.).

See also biracial couple, creolism, exogamy, interracial couple, interracial marriage, Mandingo party, mixed race couple, outbreeding, racial commingling, white wife.

"All's fair ...":

Short for the proverb, "All is fair in love and war"; the idea that extraordinary efforts, including the creation of advantages by any means possible, are justifiable on behalf of two of the most fundamental elements of life, survival and mating.

Comments: Other shortened forms of the proverb include, "All is fair in love," and "All is fair in war." Note also the proverb, "All is fair in trade."

Obviously many rules for mating (as well as for war) exist, for example, "Do not commit adultery" and "Do not covet your fellow's wife." Furthermore, many a circle will have a preeminent ethic of "Do no harm" or of honesty in mating. The proverb is sometimes employed to suggest overriding such rules, but often it is used simply as a spur to find the means to overcome obstacles without being as scrupulous as one might be in other areas of life.

Contrast code (q.v.). See also "an it harm none, do what ye will," erotic deontology, hostages to fortune, law of love, new morality, Seventh Commandment, sexosophy, sexual ethics, sexual morality, steal, Tenth Commandment, Westminster wedding.

Quotation from Maria Edgeworth Illustrating "In Love and War"
In love and war, you know, all stratagems are allowable.
From the novel: Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth (Dublin: H. Colbert, and J. Stockdale, 1801): xx. As cited in The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1935).

Quotation from James Payn Illustrating "In Love or War"
When she reminded him of his solemn promise ..., he hinted that "all things were fair (lies included) in love or war."
From the novel: Canon's Ward, by James Payn (London: Chatto & Windus, 1884): xviii. As cited in The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1935).

Quotation from Theodore Sturgeon Illustrating "All's Fair"
[Judge Armand Bluett to Kay Hallowell] "What I mean is," he crooned, "I just want you to like me for myself. I'm sorry I had to use any pressure. It's just that I didn't want to fail. Anyway, all's fair . . . you know." "-- in love and war," she said dutifully. And this means war. Love me for myself alone, or else.
From the science fiction novel: The Dreaming Jewels, in: The Dreaming Jewels; The Cosmic Rape; Venus Pius X, [by] by Theodore Sturgeon (New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1990): chapter [9], p. 90. The elision is his. The novel was published, New York: Greenberg, 1950; as "A Corwin Book." Later published under title: The Synthetic Man (New York: Pyramid Books, 1957).

all things to:

See be all things to.

allupaareik (Eskimo, Inuit):

The return of a woman after a wife exchange.

Source: "Spouse-Exchange among the North Alaskan Eskimo," [by] Robert F. Spencer, in: Marriage, Family, and Residence, edited by Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (1968): pp. [131]-144, specifically p. 140.

See also aleupaaktuat, anutawkun, doused lights, nuliaqatigiit, wife exchange.

x Eskimo terms.

all women are the same:

See women are all the same.

all women to (me):

1. A human female conceived of as participatory in the archetype that represents the union of male and female.

2. A person being conceived as having all that one looks for from the totality of human females, she (or, in some cases, he) being completely sufficient.

3. A person who will play the part of any human female so as to satisfy her (or his) mate's taste for diversity.

See also all men to (me), androgyne archetype, partner, roving eye, wife, women are all the same.

Quotation from D. H. Lawrence Illustrating "All Women to Me"
"Aren't I enough for you?" she [Ursula Brangwen] asked. "No," he [Rupert Birkin] said. "You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal."
From the novel: Women in Love, [by] D. H. Lawrence; with a foreword by the author and an introduction by Richard Aldington (New York: Viking Press, 1960): chapter 31, p. 472. Early editions: New York: Privately printed for subscribers only, 1920. London: Martin Secker, 1921.

ally, as in "an ally":

1. A person with whom one is kin and with whom one shares a sense of kinship obligation or family spirit.

2. A person with whom one shares a bond.

3. A person or entity one has joined with for the achievement of a common objective.

See also alliance, ally, bond.

ally, as in "to ally":

1. To bond families together by way of marriage.

2. To form a special bond.

3. To conjoin efforts, by way of a pact, for the achievement of a common objective, such as defending against or defeating an opponent.

See also alliance, ally, bond.

aloha (Hawaiian):

1. Love.

2. Compassion.

3. Mercy.

4. Pity.

5. Loved one.

6. Hello!

7. Good-bye!

8. To love.

9. To greet.

See also kuualoha, love (noun), love (verb).

x Hawaiian terms.

aloneness:

1. The state of having no one else in proximity.

2. The state of being without a partner; single (q.v.).

3. Loneliness (q.v.).

Comment: Aloneness, in either of the first two senses, is simply an external fact of one's existence, either at a given moment or as a lifestyle. It is not to be confused with loneliness. One can experience aloneness without feeling at all lonely. In fact, many enjoy aloneness for short periods of time and some even over long stretches of time. However, especially for those who don't enjoy being alone, aloneness can be one of the key factors in loneliness.

See also feme sole, unattached, unmarried.

alpha male other guy:

See AMOG.

alphamegamia:

A marriage between someone near the beginning of adult life and someone nearing its end -- that is, going by typical age patterns.

Comments: From Greek alpha (the first letter of the alphabet) + ömega (the last letter of the alphabet) + gamos ("wedlock").

I have seen the word defined as "marriage between a young woman and an older man," but I see nothing inherent in the term to suggest which partner must be the older.

Reference
There's a Word for It! A Grandiloquent Guide to Life, [by] Charles Harrington Elster (New York, NY: Scribner, c1996): p. 85.

See also age-gap relationship, alphamegamist, alphamegamous, anilojuvenogamy, anisonogamia, dysonogamia, -gamy, gerontophilia, intergenerational relationhship, isonogamia, May-December romance, opsigamy, rob the cradle, spring-autumn romance.

alphamegamist:

1. A paricipant in a marriage between someone near the beginning of adult life and someone nearing its end.

2. An advocate of alphamegamia (q.v.).

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "alphamegamia," so here included (2004).

alphamegamous:

Pertaining to or characterized by alphamegamia (q.v.).

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "alphamegamia," so here included (2004).

already existing relationship:

A relationship (q.v.) concurrent with and established prior to a certain point in time or period of time, typically in relation to a subsequently established relationship.

Quotation from Brooke Kroeger Illustrating "Already Existing Relationship"

... by June 1985 she [a second class petty officer] was dating another woman. "I was a mess," she said, "but I had fun. I was on the [USS] Frank Cable when I started seeing the second girl, and it went on for about six months in the course of the already existing relationship. I was confused. But I just didn't know what kind of decision I needed to make."

From: Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are, [by] Brooke Kroeger (New York: Public Affairs, c2003): p. 151.

altar:

See lead a bride to the altar, left at the altar.

alternate relationship geometries; abbreviated, ARG:

1. The variety of possible imaginary lines drawn from person to person with a view to representing the variety of possible love relationships (q.v.). Among the variables:

• the number of people, hence the dyad, triad, tetrad, pentad, hexad, etc. (see under each);
• the sex of each person, whether male, female, intersex (also called hermaphrodite), or transgender;
• the degree of involvement, whether primary, secondary, or tertiary (see under each);
• the love connections, both direct and indirect, reciprocal and non-reciprocal; and,
• the sexual involvements, both direct and indirect.

2. The variety of possible love relationships represented by such lines.

See also alternative sexual relationship, ARG, diagramming a love relationship, double love triangle, dyadic notation, genogram, group complexity theory, group love relationship, group marriage, intimate network, letter group, lovestyle, multilateral marriage, non-monogamy, n-tuple, pluralism of marriage patterns, polyamory, polygon, relationship levels, relationship orientation, romantic network, sexual connection, sexual geometry, sexual network, square, triadic notation.

alternate squeeze:

A lover in addition to a partner in a love relationship or marriage. <Double check>

See also action on the side, alternate squeeze, cicisbeo, lover, mistress, other man, other woman, partner, satellite relationship, secondary relationship, side girl, side squeeze.

x squeeze.

alternative dating:

Engaging in social encounters with one or more persons of a complementary sexual orientation in a way that varies from or is open to variation from the typical format where a single young male and a single young female, having encountered each other either socially or through a mutual acquaintance, go out together on a social engagement with either no sexual activity or only plain sexual activity in mind. Thus the date might be instigated by way of, for instance, a personal ad or a dating service; one or more of those on the date may be, for instance, a person in ripe maturity, or a married person, or a person seeking a homosexual encounter or relationship, or a transsexual, or a couple, or a group; the date might not be in person but, for instance, by telephone or online; or the date might lead to, for instance, group sex or cybersex.

See also action on the side, arrangement, cheating, cyberdating, cybersex partner, date, dating plan, dating service, double-date, group sex, hundred-mile rule, married but looking, new adultery, notional sex club, online dating, open marriage, open-minded, pair dating, personal ad, phone sex partner, polyamorous, swing, toothing, triangular dating, video dating.

alternative lifestyle:

1. A way of life, arising out of a distinctive set of values and attitudes, that is unusual in a given society or in any of its social classes.

2. An unconventional way of being social, for instance, by being part of a commune.

3. An at least privately open way of living, especially a lovestyle (q.v.), that does not comport with conventional mores.

Contrast traditional ways (q.v.). See also alternative sexual relationship, bohemianism, communal marriage, gay lifestyle, lifestyle, mores, open-minded, sexual avant-garde, sexual mores, sexways, slutstyle.

alternative sexual relationship:

A sexual relationship (q.v.) with one or more features that are uncommon in a given society, especially if any of those features buck conventional mores or social expectations.

See also alternate relationship geometries, alternative lifestyle, lovestyle, open-minded, sexual mores, sexways.

altruism:

1. The drive for a goodness in which some or all may particpate including oneself or, if necessary, at the expense of oneself.

2. The sacrifice of self-interest for the sake of the interest of others, for instance, for one's spouse or family; selflessness.

Comment: Altruism in both senses is criticized on several grounds, for instance, questions like these may be raised:

• Isn't the greater good to satisfy the needs of all, including the ego, at the expense of none?
• Can altruism truly be freed of self-interest and unconscious motives?
• Are human beings truly better off when acting free of self-interest?
• What would it mean for the human species as such or for a country as such to be altruistic beyond affordability? Might the result be catastrophic?
• When an altruistic personality meets a tit-for-tat personality, is it really the fault of the tit-for-tat personality when the altruistic personality rejects tit-for-tat thus orphaning a good project?
• Aren't non-altruistic motives needed to make an economic system work? And,
• Doesn't an expectation of altruism actually devolve onto certain types of people thus creating an unfortunate class of the self-effaced, as has happened to many women?

Carefully contrast agapic love (q.v.). See also altruist, Florence Nightingale syndrome, love, sacrificial love.

altruist:

A person characterized, at least momentarily, by altruism.

See also altruism, rescuer.

amant en titre (French):

Official or regular lover.

See also lover (which see too for lexical example).

x French terms.

amari:

A person to whom one is not married but with whom one is in a love relationship; a lover (q.v.).

See also cohabitant, cohabitee, companion, copemate, co-vivant, cuddle buddy, erotic friend, freemate, intimate companion, leman, main squeeze, major squeeze, mate, paramour, partner, PASSLQ, poplolly, POSSLQ, sex partner, significant other, sweetheart, TOCOTOX, umfriend, very good friend.

Charles Harrington Elster on "Amari"
The most socially acceptable term I have found for an intimate companion is amari (ah-MAH-ree). Coined by poet Cynthia MacDonald, amari appears in Jack Hitt's In a Word: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist but Ought To [New York: Dell Laurel, 1992]; it combines the Greek privative prefix a-, not, and the Latin maritare, to marry (with a suggestive similarity to the Iltalian amore, love), to denote a sexual partner to whom one is not married.
From: There's a Word For It! A Grandiloquent Guide to Life, [by] Charles Harrington Elster (New York, NY: Scribner, c1996): p. 67.

amars (Old French?):

False love, characterized by sensuality for its own sake, fickleness, mercenary motives, or a focus on promiscuity rather than on one's beloved. Its fruition is to bring to naught what is good and noble in human beings.

Comment: This is contrasted, for instance by the Twelfth Century Gascon troubadour Marcabru, with "amors" or good love, especially courtly love (q.v.).

Contrast amor mixtus (q.v.) and amor purus (q.v.). See also love, promiscuity, sexual varietism.

x French terms.

amative:

1. Disposed to love or to fall in love.

2. Inclined to sexual passion.

See also amorous, erotic, love, loving, moony, passionate, romance junky, romantic.

ambilocal residence:

In reference to the married, living in either the husband's or the wife's place of origin, generally in accordance with custom.

Also called bilocal residence (q.v.). See also amitalocal residence, avunculocal residence, duolocal residence, matrilocal residence, matripatrilocal residence, neolocal residence, patrilocal residence, unilocal residence, uxoribilocal residence, uxorilocal residence, uxoripatrilocal residence, virilocal residence, walk-in marriage.

ambivalent feelings:

1. Conflicting emotions that generate uncertainty, for instance, as to whether or not to choose a person as a mate or whether or not to remain with a person as a mate

2. Emotions of love and hatred for the same person at the same time; sometimes expressed in the singular: "ambivalent feeling."

Source for the second definition: Encyclopaedia Sexualis (1936).

See also erotic hostility, love-hate relationship.

amejo; plural: amejo:

A young Japanese woman who dates men in the American armed forces, typically white men; a young Japanese woman who frequents bars or clubs near American military bases in order to hook up with American serivcemen.

Comments: American + jo (Japanese for "woman").

Sometimes used adjectivally, as in "amejo chicks."

The term is especially associated with such women from Okinawa. It is sometimes used by Japanese as a derogatory term.

See also Asian fetish, GI groupie, girl in every port, kokujo, Pinkerton syndrome, racial commingling, sarong party girl.

x Japanese terms.

amicus certus (Latin):

True love (q.v.).

x Latin terms.

amitalocal residence:

In reference to the married, living with the wife's father's sister, generally in accordance with custom.

See also ambilocal residence, avunculocal residence, bilocal residence, duolocal residence, matrilocal residence, matripatrilocal residence, neolocal residence, patrilocal residence, unilocal residence, uxoribilocal residence, uxorilocal residence, uxoripatrilocal residence, virilocal residence, walk-in marriage.

amitié particulière (French):

"Particular friendship."

1. Friendly relations.

2. A homosexual relationship.

See also friendship, homosexuality, particular relationship.

x French terms.

amixia:

Absence of interbreeding or intermarriage with others outside of one's social group, whether the group is defined by ethnicity, caste, religion, or something else. Typically amixia is the result of social restriction.

See also folly, hypergamy, hypogamy, intermarriage, miscegenation, mixed marriage, panmixia, population race, "unequally yoked."

Amnon-Tamar syndrome:

Despising a woman immediately after one has taken her sexually or maritally; said of a man.

Comment: The story of Amnon and Tamar is found in 2 Samuel 13. The key relevant verse (13:15) reads, in the Authorized (King James) Version: "Then [after he lay with her] Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone."

See also anagapesis, fall out of love, love-hate relationship, unlove.

x Bible.

x syndromes.

Quotation from Curt Leviant Illustrating "Amnon-Tamar syndrome"
[Aviva]: "He was so full of charm before I married him... But the day after we were married, the day after, I sensed an aloofness in him. It's as if once he had me, he hated me ..." [Charlie]: "Do you know the biblical story of Amnon and Tamar?" "No." "That's what I've called the Amnon-Tamar syndrome in an article I published last year. It's the story of Kind [i.e. King] David's son who lusts for his half-sister and after he has her he hates her ... What kind of aloofness?"
From: Diary of an Adulterous Woman: A Novel: Including an ABC Directory That Offers Alphabetical Tidbits and Surprises, [by] Curt Leviant ([Syracuse, N.Y.]: Syracuse University Press, 2001; in series: Library of Modern Jewish Literature): p. 271. The first elision is mine, the rest Leviant's.

amober, amobr, or amobyr:

A fee payable, under Welsh law of olden times, to a lord upon the marriage of a maid of his manor.

See also arrha, avail of marriage, brideprice, dowry, droit de seigneur, formariage, ius primae noctis, lairwite, maritagium, mercheta mulierum, weotuma.

amoeba:

An asexual person, this on analogy with certain asexual microorganisms, also called amoebas.

Comment: Evidently this is a term used by some asexuals of themselves.

See also ace, asexual.

AMOG:

Alpha male other guy, that is, a male who is in direct competition with oneself for a female.

See also competition jealousy.

x alpha male other guy.

amomaxia:

1. A fetish or penchant for making love in a parked car.

 2. Engaging in sexual activity in a parked car; parking, in the sense of making out in a stopped vehicle.

Comments: I can only guess at the formation of the word, which dates back at least to 1967: amor (Latin for "love") + maximus (in Latin the superlative of magnus, "great) + -ia (suffix here indicating a psychological condition), so "love to the max." Obviously that doesn't reveal the connection to cars, so perhaps: amor + axis (Latin for "axle") + -ia; but then one would expect a spelling like "amoraxia." That suggests a yet more complex, perhaps unnatural, formation, such as amor + domus (Latin for "home") + axis + -ia, thus "love in a home with axles, this as a penchant or paraphilia."

The term has come to be part of the vocabulary of dogging, although the practice of amomaxia is not itself automatically dogging, since it doesn't necessarily involve viewers or outside participants.

See also dogging, parking lot romance.

amore (Italian):

Love; affection.

See also affection, love, primo amore.

x Italian terms.

amoretto; plural, amoretti:

A cupid, often represented as a chubby infant with wings.

Comment: Capitalized and in the plural, the term usually refers to a cycle of love poems in sonnet form by Edmund Spenser, published in 1595.

See also cherub, Cupid's golden arrow, love poem, sex god.

amorisation:

See amorization.

amorist:

1. A person skilled in the arts of love, especially one who is strongly identified with sexuality by way of profession or lifestyle.

2. A person devoted to sexualove.

3. A person who spins tales of romantic love.

See also art of love, sexualove.

amorization, or amorisation:

The process of the unification of humankind in love in a way that enhances both community and each person.

Comment: Attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, in translation.

See also agapic love, love.

x amorisation.

amor mixtus (Latin):

"Mixed love"; the mixing of sensual desire for a person to whom one is not married with carnal knowledge of that person.

Comment: The term goes back at least to the troubadours of Twelfth Century Provence and is associated with courtly love (q.v.).

Contrast amars (q.v.) and amor purus (q.v.). See also in love, love, romantic love.

x Latin terms.

x mixed love.

x mixtus amor.

Quotation from Andreas Capellanus on Pure love (Amor Purus) and Mixed Love (Amor Mixtus)
[20] One kind of love is pure, and one is called mixed. It is the pure love which binds together the hearts of two lovers with feeling of delight. This kind consists in the contemplation of the mind and the affection of the heart; it goes as far as the kiss and the embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, for that is not permitted to those who wish to love purely. This is the kind that anyone who is intent upon love ought to embrace with all his might, for this love goes on increasing without end, and we know that no one ever regretted [21] practicing it, and the more of it one has the more one wants. This love is distinguished by being of such virtue that from it arises all excellence of character, and no injury comes from it, and God sees very little offense in it. No maiden can ever be corrupted by such a love, nor can a widow or a wife receive any harm or suffer any injury to her reputation. This love I cherish, this I follow and ever adore and never cease urgently to demand of you. But that is called mixed love which gets its effect from every delight of the flesh and culminates in the final act of Venus. What sort of love this is you may clearly see from what I have already said, for this kind quickly fails, and one often regrets having practiced it; by it one's neighbor is injured, the Heavenly King is offended, and from it come very grave dangers. But I do not say this as though I meant to condemn mixed love, I merely wish to show which of the two is preferable. But mixed love, too, is real love, and it is praiseworthy, and we say that it is the source of all good things, although from it grave dangers threaten, too. Therefore I approve of both pure love and mixed love, but I prefer to practice pure love.
The Art of Courtly Love, [by] Andreas Capellanus; translated [from De arte honeste amandi] by John Jay Parry; edited and abridged by Frederick W. Locke (New York: Continuum, 1990, c1957; "A Frederick Ungar Book"): book 1, dialogue 8. The paragraph divisions and underlinings are mine. De arte honeste amandi was written between A.D. 1174 and 1186.

Alexander J. Denomy on Mixed Love (Amor Mixtus)
Such love will be called mixed love. It is a love which begins as pure love and terminates in physical union. Because such a love lasts but a short while, because it weakens and lessens desire, may even put an end to it, the practice of pure love was preferred to it [by the troubadours]. Mixed love, however, was recognized as true love because, like pure love, it proceeds from the same concupiscible feeling of the heart and its substance is the same, that is, desire. Mixed love is true love because it is desire and, as desire, it is productive of every good.
From: The Heresy of Courtly Love, [by] Alexander J. Denomy; with an introduction by William Lane Keleher (New York: Declan X. McMullen Co., c1947; in series: Boston College Candlemas Lectures on Christian Literature): p. 26.

amorosa:

1. A female lover.

2. A courtesan.

See also courtesan, lover, partner.

amoroso:

A male lover.

See also lover, partner.

amorous:

1. Romantic; feeling in love.

2. Sexually playful; erotically sportive.

3. Having to do with love.

See also amative, erotic, in love, love, loving, moony, passionate, romantic.

amorous paranoia:

See delusional jealousy.

amor platonicus (Latin):

Platonic love (q.v.).

x Latin terms.

amor purus (Latin):

"Pure love"; sensual desire for a person to whom one is not married, cultivated even by way of nude contact, but without coition; an ideal of courtly love (q.v.).

Contrast amars (q.v.) and amor mixtus (q.v., especially the quotation). See also demi-vierge, heart, in love, love, romantic love, Sunday husband.

x Latin terms.

x pure love.

x purus amor.

Quotation from Alexander J. Denomy on Pure Love (Amor Purus)
[23] Pure love consists in the union of the hearts and minds of the lovers. It is a love that yearns for and, at times, is rewarded by the solace of every delight of the beloved except the physical [23] possession of her. That is not allowed to those who love purely.... [25] Far from being pure in the accepted sense or disinterested, pure love is sensual, carnal and selfish in that it allows, approves and encourages all that fans and provokes desire. Despite all the sensuality that such love implies, for the troubadours it was a spiritual love in that it sought a union of hearts and minds and not of bodies. It was a virtuous love in so far as it was the source of all good and virtue ...
From: The Heresy of Courtly Love, [by] Alexander J. Denomy; with an introduction by William Lane Keleher (New York: Declan X. McMullen Co., c1947; in series: Boston College Candlemas Lectures on Christian Literature).

amor socraticus:

See platonic love.

amortorculist:

A pitiful or insignificant lover (q.v.).

See also partner.

amor vincit omnia (Latin):

See omnia vincit amor.

-amory: adjective, -amorous; practitioner, -amorist:

The part of a word formation that refers to being in love or in a love relationship.

Comment: This combining form derives from Latin and so is most naturally joined with other Latin-derived parts, but is in fact often combined with Greek parts, as in "polyamory."

See also biamorous, biamory, -gamy, in love, love relationship, monamorist, monamorous, monamory, monoamorist, monoamorous, monoamory, pentamorous, pentamory, polyamorist, polyamorous, polyamory, quadramorous, quadramory, triamorous, triamory.

x Latin terms.

amour (French):

1. A lover of any sex.

2. An affair.

3. Sexual love.

See also faux affair, amour, intrigue, love, lover, married at Finglesham Church, réligion d'amour, sexual love.

x French terms.

Quotation from Aldous Huxley Illustrating "Amour"
"I entirely disagree with you," said Mary [Bracegirdle]. "Sex isn't a laughing matter; it's serious." .... "Indeed," Mr. Scogan continued, "it seems to me one of the few permanently and everlastingly amusing subjects that exists. Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.
From the novel: Crome Yellow, [by] Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Row, 1974; in publisher' series: Perennial Library; P 336): chapter 15, p. 73. Originally published: London: Chatto & Windus, 1921; in the United States: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1922.

amour à l'anglaise (French):

1. Romantic love English-style.

2. Romantic love as though whom one loves does not much matter, an attitude evidently found among some English people in the years immediately following World War I.

See also love, romantic love.

x love à l'anglaise.

Quotation from D. H. Lawrence Illustrating "Love à l'anglaise."
[185] But you -- you yourself! Don't you feel anything?" Hannele's amazement was reaching the point of incredulity. She began to feel that he [Alexander Hepburn] was making it up. It was all so different from her own point of view. To sit there so quiet and to make such statements in all good faith: no, it was impossible. "I don't consider I count," he said naïvely.... "But if you matter so very little, what do you do anything at all for?" she asked. "Oh, one has to. And then, why not? Why not do things, even if oneself hardly matters. Look at the moon. It doesn't matter in the least to the moon whether I exist or whether I don't. So why should it matter to me?" .... [186] "And so I don't mean anything to you at all?" she said. "I didn't say that," he replied. "Nothing means anything to you," she challenged. "I don't say that." "Whether it's your wife -- or me -- or the moon -- toute la même chose [all the same thing]." "No -- no -- that's hardly the way to look at it." She gazed at him in such utter amazement that she felt something would really explode in her if she heard another word. Was this a man? -- or what was it? It was too much for her, that was all.... "I suppose," she said to herself, "that is love â l'anglaise [sic]. But it's more than I can swallow."
From the short story: "The Captain's Doll," in: The Ladybird, by D. H. Lawrence (London: Martin Secker, 1923): pp. 185-186. The marks of omission are mine.

amour-caprice (French):

Fickle love; passion by impulse, whim, or fancy.

See also love.

amour courtois (French):

Courtly love.

See also courtly love, love.

amour de coeur (French):

Heart-felt passion; love from the heart.

See also heart, love.

amour de loin (French):

Love from afar; adoration from a distance.

See also Frauendienst, in love at second hand, long-distance relationship, love, princesse lointaine.

amour des sens (French):

"Passion of the senses"; sensual love.

For comment, see under "amour de tête."

See also love, sensual love.

amour de tête (French):

"Head love," "passion of mind," or "intellectual love."

1. Platonic love.

2. An attraction or bond on the basis of one or more common interests.

3. A passion experienced largely as a matter of the imagination.

Comment: One of the classic passages said to describe the difference between les deux sortes d'amours, the two kinds of love, amour de tête and amour des sens, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions (1782), book 1, concerning Mademoiselle de Vulson versus Mademoiselle Goton. However, those terms are not specifically used.

See also love, heterosexual friendship, male-female friendship, platonic love.

amour de vanité (French):

Vanity-love; love as a luxury or as a matter of pride.

Comment: This is one of four types of love or mating emotion delineated by Stendahl (pen-name of Marie-Henri Behl, 1783-1842) in De l'amour (1822): book 1, chapter 1. The motivation behind amour de vanité is the desire to puff up the self so as to seem more significant in the eyes of others and even in one's own eyes.

See also amour-goût, amour-passion, amour-physique, boytoy, cougar relationship, ego-jealousy, love, girl toy, showpiece, trade up, toy boy, trophy husband, trophy wife.

x vanity love.

amourette:

1. A brief affair.

2. An affair that is insignificant to oneself.

3. A female participant in a brief or trifling affair.

See also affair, affair of the flesh, casual relationship, comet, dalliance, escapade romantique, expiration dating, fling, flirtation, insignificant other, intrigue, liaison, partner, peccadillo, short-term relationship, whirlwind romance.

amour fol:

See amour fou.

amour fou, or amour fol (French):

"Crazy love."

1. Infatuation; obsessive love.

2. Transient passion.

Comment: For lexical example, see under "connaturality."

See also besotted, crazy about, engouement, folie à deux, go gaga over, infatuation, love-cracked, madly in love.

x amour fol.

amour-goût (French):

Mannered, ritualized, stylized, gallant love; love per the conventions and conveniences of the time and place.

Comment: This is one of four types of love or mating emotion delineated by Stendahl (pen-name of Marie-Henri Behl, 1783-1842) in De l'amour (1822): book 1, chapter 1. He comments that whereas amour-passion carries us away even against our interests, amour-goût invariably knows how to adjust itself to them. The motivation behind amour-goût is the urge to fulfill internalized social expectations.

See also amour de vanité, amour-passion, amour-physique, love.

x mannered love.

amour-passion (French):

Passionate, romantic love.

Comment: This is one of four types of love or mating emotion delineated by Stendahl (pen-name of Marie-Henri Behl, 1783-1842) in De l'amour (1822): book 1, chapter 1. The motivation behind amour-passion is union with one's love interest, and side effects often include transformation of the self and the subversion of conventionalities.

See also amour de vanité, amour-goût, amour-physique, besotted, crystallization, hot love, in love, Laws of Lovers' Passion, limerence, love, love-passion, passion, passionate love, romantic love, wildly in love with.

x passion-love.

amour-physique (French):

Physical, carnal, sensual love.

Comment: This is one of four types of love or mating emotion delineated by Stendahl (pen-name of Marie-Henri Behl, 1783-1842) in De l'amour (1822): book 1, chapter 1. The motivation behind amour-physique is sexual desire.

See also amour de vanité, amour-goût, amour-passion, carnal love, eromance, erotic love, love, love's lust, sexual desire.

x physical love.

amour profonde (French):

Deep-seated love.

See also love.

amour voulu (French):

Love as a matter of the will, especially a determined will.

Comment: For lexical example, see under "connaturality."

Contrast amour fou (q.v.). See also courtly love, love.

amour vrai (French):

True love (q.v.).

anagapesis:

Indifference with respect to a person one once loved.

See also Amnon-Tamar syndrome, in love.

anaclitic love:

One's sexual instinct as focused on someone who is or those who are like one's initial caregiver(s); an individual's sexual instinct with its love-object being persons or some one person modeled after the woman who tended that individual as an infant.

Comment: From the Greek anaklitos ("leaning upon").

Source: "On Narcissism: An Introduction," in: Collected Papers, [by] Sigmund Freud; authorized translation under the supervision of Joan Riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959; in series: The International Psycho-Analytical Library; no. 10): v. 4, pp. 30-59, especially pp. 44ff. First published in Jahrbuch; Bd. 6 (1914). The German term used by Freud is Anlehnungstypus ("leaning-up-against type").

See also love, narcissistic love.

x Anlehnungstypus.

x German terms.

ancient history:

1. Anything relegated to the past and considered not worth or no longer worth becoming upset about.

2. An ex; a person one is no longer involved with, especially such a person one no longer wishes to be involved with.

See also ex, ghosts of relationships past, past attachment.

androcracy:

1. Rule by a man or men.

2. The dominion of a man or men.

3. A marriage in which the husband or husbands rule.

Source: The Doctrine of Creation (Church Dogmatics, Volume III, 2), by Karl Barth; translators, Harold Knight [and others] (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960): p. 315.

Contrast gynocracy (q.v.). See also doll's house marriage, doll's house relationship, gamical, "head of the wife," lord, maritodespotism, master, rule the roost.

androgyne archetype, or androgyn archetype:

In an explanatory Greek myth, a primeval human being as two in one until separated by Zeus (in Latin: Jupiter). Hence, a person seeks his or her other half in order to complete the primordial unity.

Comments: According to Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium,¹ there were originally three two-in-one primeval human beings -- one male/male, one female/female, and one male/female. Each was split in such a way that each part seeks its other half. Thus a mythic explanation was provided for male homosexuality, female homosexuality, and heterosexuality -- or, rather, for the attractions involved.²

According to the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (died circa 50 C.E.), when God created humankind as male and female (Genesis 1:27), individual members of humankind, whether male or female, had not yet taken shape; but human maleness and femaleness existed as principles belonging to the genus.³ Only later is woman created as a separate entity (2:21-22); and when man and woman meet,

"Love supervenes, brings together and fits into one the divided halves, as it were, of a single living creature, and sets up in each of them a desire for fellowship with the other with a view to the production of their like."⁴

The ancient rabbinic commentary, Genesis (Bereshith) Rabbah, contains this discussion:

"R. Jeremiah b. Leazar said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, He created him an hermaphrodite ..., for it is said, Male and female created He them and called their name Adam (Gen. v, 2). R. Samuel b. Nahman said: When the Lord created Adam He created him double-faced, then He split him and made him of two backs, one back on this side and one back on the other side. To this it is objected: But it is written, And He took one of his ribs, etc. (Gen. ii, 21)? [Mi-zalothaw means] one of his sides, replied he, as you read, And for the second side (zela') of the tabernacle, etc. (Ex. xxvi, 20)." (8.1).⁵

The archetype had some bearing on early Christian and Patristic rhetoric. For some instances, consider:

• conceivably, the extrabiblical Jesus logion about making "the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female (not) be female";⁶
• the doctrine of the Naasseni, who believed that the "new man," like the primal man, is a hermaphrodite, one implication being that "the intercourse of woman with man is demonstrated ... to be an exceedingly wicked and filthy (practice)."⁷
• one of the mentions of "one flesh" by John Chrysostom.⁸

The archetype has had some cachet in the modern period. For instance, David Hume (1711-1776) expanded upon it:

"When JUPITER had separated the male from the female, and had quelled their pride and ambition by so severe an operation, he could not but repent him of the cruelty of his vengeance ... JUPITER sent down LOVE and HYMEN to collect the broken halves of human kind, and piece them together in the best manner possible... The chief counsellor and favourite of HYMEN was CARE, who was continually filling his patron's head with prospects of futurity; a settlement, family, children, servants; so that little else was regarded in all the matches they made. On the other hand, Love had chosen PLEASURE for his favourite, who was as pernicious a counsellor as the other, and would never allow Love to look beyond the present momentary gratification, or the satisfying of the prevailing inclination... After hearing the pleadings on both sides, he [JUPITER] ordered an immediate reconcilement betwixt Love and HYMEN, as the only expedient for giving happiness to mankind: And that he might be sure this reconcilement should be durable, he laid his strict injunctions on them never to join any halves without consulting their favourites Care and Pleasure, and obtaining the consent of both to the conjunction. Where this order is strictly observed, the Androgyne is perfectly restored, and the human race enjoy the same happiness as in their primæval state. The seam is scarce perceived that joins the two beings; but both of them combine to form one perfect and happy creature."⁹

References
1 Plato, Symposium 189c-193d.
2 For discussion see: Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, [by] Luc Brisson; translated by Janet Lloyd (Berkeley: University of California Press, c2002): chapter 3. The book is a translation from the French of Le sexe incertain (1997).
3 Philo, De Opificio Mundi 76 = 1.18 = XXIV.
4 Philo, De Opificio Mundi 152 = 1.37 = LIII (translation by G. H. Whitaker in The Loeb Classical Library).
5 Midrash Rabbah, translated into English, with notes, glossary and indices, under the editorship of H. Freedman and Maurice Simon; with a foreword by I. Epstein (3rd ed. London: Soncino Press, 1983): v. 1, p. 54. Diacritics are omitted. The square brackets are theirs, the mark of omission mine. The mark of omission is for a misleading word, "bi-sexual," which was placed in square brackets. A better translation than either "hermaphrodite" or "bi-sexual" would be "androgyne." Rabbis avoided the word "hermaphrodite," since it is composed of the names of two Greek deities.
6 Gospel of Thomas 22 (translation by A. Guillaumont and others, 1959). Compare: in the New Testament: Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:15. in the New Testament apocrypha: Gospel of Thomas 4, 11, 23, 61, 106; Gospel of the Egyptians (as quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis III.xiii = 3.91ff); and, in the Apostolic Fathers: 2 Clement 12:2-6.
7 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 5:2; cf. 5:1, 3 (translation by J. H. MacMahon in The Ante-Nicene Fathers; v. 5, p. 49).
8 John Chrysostom, In Epistolam ad Romanos. Homily 4. In Chrysostom, it is the devil who sunders the sexes from one another, but it is a severing of the joining in "one flesh" by intercourse.
9 "Of Love and Marriage," in: Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, [by] David Hume; edited and with a foreword, notes, and glossary by Eugene F. Miller; with an apparatus of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (Revised ed. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, c1987): pp. [557]-562, specifically 561-562. Originally published 1741. This essay was withdrawn after the 1760 edition. Italics are his.

See also Adam's rib, all women to (me), happy marriage, heterosexual, homosexual, incompleteness myth of singlehood, lesbianism, Lilith, "one flesh," other half, paradisal marriage, prelapsarian marriage, transphobia.

x Greek terms.

x myths.

Related term beyond the scope of this glossary: gynander.

androgynophilia:

"Man and woman love attraction"; being in love with both a man and a woman, either at the same time or one after the other.

See also androphilia, bisexual, gynophilia, in love, -philia, philogeneity, swing both ways.

androlatry:

Adoration of either a man, such as one's husband, or men generally, either in a specific case or as a practice on the part of some.

Contrast gyniolatry (q.v.). See also adoration-lust, adore, dulia, husband worship, maritodespotism, pedestalism, place on a pedestal, sex god.

andromania:

1. A woman's crazed desire for a particular man or for multiple men.

2. Male-oriented sexual desire of a female far in excess of what is considered normal.

Contrast gynecomania (q.v.). See also boy crazy, Catherine the Great complex, erotomania, lovertine, man-keen, Messalina complex, nymphomania, oversexed, sex maniac, sexual addiction, Sherfey syndrome, tragolimia.

androphilia:

"Male love attraction"; being in love with a man. If the one in love is a female, then the term is female androphilia; if a male, then male androphilia.

See also androgynophilia, boy crazy, gynophilia, heterosexuality, homosexuality, in love, man-keen, -philia, sexual orientation.

"And ye harm none, do what ye will":

See "an it harm none, do what ye will."

angélica (Spanglish):

A young unmarried woman.

Source: Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, by Ilan Stavans (c2003), who comments that the term dates from 1885.

See also bachelorette, dance barefoot, feme sole, jeune fille à marier, maiden, miss, never married, nubile, single, unmarried.

x Spanish and Spanglish terms.

angutawkun; plural(?), angutawkattigiit (Eskimo, Inuit):

1. A man who exchanges wives with another man.

2. One of the men who have been married to the same woman at different times.

Source: "Spouse-Exchange among the North Alaskan Eskimo," [by] Robert F. Spencer, in: Marriage, Family, and Residence, edited by Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (1968): pp. [131]-144, specifically pp. 137-138, 140.

Contrast nuliinuaroak (q.v.). See also aiparik, allupaareik, aytpareik, lover-in-law, nangsaegaek, nuliaqatigiit, partner, poly connected, qatangun, taio, wife exchange.

x Eskimo terms.

anhedonia:

1. An acquired inability to experience pleasure or to experience it without anxiety.

2. An acquired inability to experience happiness or to experience it without anxiety.

See also aphinisis, frigidity, hyphedonia, hyposexuality, silent epidemic.

anhedonic:

1. Characterized by or pertaining to an acquired inability to experience pleasure or to experience it without anxiety.

2. Characterized by or pertaining to an acquired inability to experience happiness or to experience it without anxiety.

See also asexual, frigid, hedonism, hyposexual, jaded, prudish, sex-negative stance, undersexed.

Quotation from Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt Illustrating "Anhedonic"
Sex gets a bad rap from our anhedonic culture, whose Puritan roots have led to a deep distrust of pleasure for its own sake.
From: The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, [by] Dossie Easton & Catherine A. Liszt (San Francisco, CA: Greenery Press, c1997): p. 20.

anilogamy:

Marriage on the part of an old woman.

Comments: Coined by me, June 19, 2009, to complement "gerontogamy."

From Latin anilis ("old womanish") + Greek gamos ("union" or "wedlock"). I chose a mix of Latin and Greek (a) because of the already existing word, "anilojuvenogamy," and (b) because this word sounds better than constructions from the Greek words for "old woman" (graia, graus, and presbutis), perhaps the best construction of which would be "presbytigamy."

Contrast gerontogamy (q.v.). See also -gamy, mature person, old lady, opsigamy, take the giggle-trot.

anilojuvenogamist:

1. A participant in a marriage in which there is a considerable age difference between partners, a woman being the older partner.

2. An advocate of anilojuvenogamy.

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "anilojuvenogamy," so here included (2004).

See also anilojuvenogamy, cougar.

anilojuvenogamous:

Pertaining to or characterized by anilojuvenogamy (q.v.).

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "anilojuvenogamy," so here included (2004).

anilojuvenogamy:

A marriage in which there is a considerable age difference between partners, a woman being the older partner.

Comment: Attributed to Charles Harrington Elster, 1996.

From Latin anilis ("old womanish") + juvenis ("a youth") + Greek gamos ("wedlock").

Reference
There's a Word for It! A Grandiloquent Guide to Life, [by] Charles Harrington Elster (New York, NY: Scribner, c1996): p. 85.

See also age-gap relationship, alphamegamia, anilojuvenogamist, anilojuvenogamous, anisonogamia, cougar relationship, dysonogamia, -gamy, gerontogamy, gerontophilia, intergenerational relationhship, May-December romance, opsigamy, rob the cradle, spring-autumn romance.

anisonogamia:

1. Marriage between people of markedly different ages.

2. Attraction to a much younger person or attraction to a much older person.

Comment: Regarding the breakdown of the word, see under "isonogamia."

See also age-gap relationship, anilojuvenogamy, anisonogamist, anisonogamous, attraction, cougar relationship, dysonogamia, -gamy, gerontogamy, gerontophilia, intergenerational relationhship, Lolita, marriage, mature person, May-December romance, mail-order bride, opsigamy, sugar daddy, rob the cradle, spring-autumn romance, unnatural.

anisonogamist:

1. A person who marries someone of a markedly different age.

2. A person who advocates or supports marriage between people of markedly different ages.

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "anisonogamia," so here included.

See also anisonogamia.

anisonogamous:

Pertaining to or characterized by marriage between people of markedly different ages.

Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "anisonogamia," so here included.

See also anisonogamia.

"an it harm none, do what ye will":

The idea that moral questions start once one's actions begin to cause harm to beings, the implicit principles being (a) that one should minimize harm, and (b) that any action that causes no harm is okay.

Comments: The "an" is a borrowing from Middle English, meaning "and." The "ye" is likewise a borrowing from Middle English, meaning "you."

These eight words comprise the Wiccan Rede ("Rede" meaning "counsel" or "advice") and embody what is sometimes called the Rede-concept. (Incidentally, the fuller poem in which these eight words are embedded is also called the Wiccan Rede or "Rede of the Wiccae.") Since the mid 1970s, the Wiccan Rede has emerged as the central ethical principle of many practitioners of the Old Religion, that is, Wicca or witchcraft.

The version given here is the one attributed to Adriana Porter. See the following box for a fuller quotation as apropos to this glossary.

Excerpts from the "Rede of the Wiccae"
1. Bide the Wiccan laws ye must in perfect love an perfect trust. 2. Live an let live - fairly take an fairly give. [snip] 25. True in love ever be unless thy lover's false to thee. 26. Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill - an' it harm none, do what ye will.
From: "Rede of the Wiccae (Being Knowne as the Counsel of the Wise Ones)," attributed to Adriana Porter (d. 1946) and first published in the article, "Wiccan-Pagan Potpourri," by Lady Gwen [Thompson, Celtic Traditionalist from New Haven, Connecticut, 1928-1986, Adriana Porter being her paternal grandmother], in Green Egg; v. 3, no. 69 (Ostara, that is, the first day of spring, 1975). For an online version of the article, see: http://nemedcuculatii.org/content/view/20/

Countless alternative versions of the Wiccan Rede exist, for example:

• And it harm none, do what you will.
• And ye harm none, do what ye will.
• An' it harm none, do what thou will.
• An it harm none, do what ye will.
• An ye harm none, do as ye will.
• An ye harm none, do what ye will.

And there are many other forms in which the Rede-concept appears. See the following box for an example.

The Rede-Concept as Expressed by Doreen Valiente
And Do What You Will be the challenge, So be it in love that harms none, For this is the only commandment.
From: "The Witches Creed," in: Witchcraft for Tomorrow, [by] Doreen Valiente (London: R. Hale; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978). Note well: "The Witches Creed" has many variants.

The Rede-concept echoes many a millennia-old or centuries-old idea, for instance, the ahimsa principle in Indian philosophy, that is, the principle of harmlessness. Take note also of the following quotations.

Precursors of the Rede-Concept
"As to diseases, make a habit of two things -- to help, or at least to do no harm." --> Hippocrates (ca. 460-ca. 370 B.C.), Epidëmiön = Epidemics 1:11 (translation by W. H. S. Jones, 1923, in The Loeb Classical Library).
"Agapic love does not wreak harm upon one's fellow human being." --> Paul the Apostle (flourished ca. 35-ca. 67 C.E.) in Romans 13:10 (my translation).
"Love, and do what you will." --> Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Tractatus in Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos = Ten Homilies on the Epistle of John to the Parthians 7:8 (modernization of the translation by H. Browne, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church; series 1, v. 7, p. 504).
"The only rule of the house [of Thélème, a utopian community] was: DO AS THOU WILT ..." --> François Rabelais (ca. 1495-1553), Gargantua & Pantagruel, book 1, chapter 57 (as translated by Jacques LeClercq, 1936). "Do as thou wilt" translates "Fais ce que voudras."
"If it is pleasing, it is permitted." --> Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), Aminta (1581), Act 1, scene 1, the chorus; as translated in: "Fantasizing a Sexual Golden Age in Seventeenth-Century Poetry," [by] Eugene R. Cunnar, in: Renaissance Discourses of Desire, edited by Claude J. Summer and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c1993): pp. 179-205, specifically p. 187. Translates "S'ei piace, ei lice."

The origin of the Rede-concept within Wicca is shrouded in obscurity. Some trace it, as it found its way into some Wiccan circles (evidently not Porter's), by way of the book by Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964), entitled The Meaning of Witchcraft (London: Aquarian Press, 1959), to Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), specifically his novel, Les Aventures du Roi Pausole (1901).

King Pausole's Code in Quotation
By dint of repeatedly simplifying the Book of Customs inherited from his ancestors, Pausole had finally enacted a code which consisted of but two articles and thus possessed the unique distinction of being intelligible to the populace-at-large. Here it is in its entirety: I. Do no wrong to thy neighbor. II. Observing this, do as thou pleasest.
From the novel: The Adventures of King Pausole, book 1, chapter 1, in: The Collected Works of Pierre Louÿs ... illustrations by Harry G. Spanner (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., c1932): p. 321. Reprint; originally: [Philadelphia]: Privately Printed for the Pierre Louÿs Society, 1926. Translation of Les Aventures du Roi Pausole (1901).

In King Pausole's interpretation, this code afforded a wide range of sexual freedom to all within his realm of Tryphême, so long as deceit was not involved. Although the Wiccan Rede serves as both a guide to the use of Magick and a general ethical principle, which seems, on the surface, to harmonize easily with the Golden Rule, in many circles its association with a sexual ethic that stands in sharp contrast to the usual sexual codes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam remains strong (hence the inclusion in this glossary). Thus, to be "true in love" (note the quotation from the "Rede of the Wiccae" above) does not necessarily mean, to all who subscribe to the Wiccan Rede, to be monogamous, as it does, for instance, to many Christian traditionalists.

With regard to love relationships, frequently the effect of the Wiccan Rede is to place a strong emphasis upon negotiation. Among the ethical issues that inevitably arise: (a) how and when to change the rules of a relationship, and (b) who holds responsibility for emotional hurt when.

Contrast, for instance, no sex outside of marriage (q.v.). See also "All's fair ...," erotic deontology, ethical hedonism, libertarianism, liberty, moral code, moral equivalence, new morality, nonjudgmental, old wife, pansexualism, separation of sex and power, sexosophy, sex-positive stance, sexual ethics, sexual freedom, sexual justice, sexual liberation, sexual morality, sexual permissiveness, she-troth, true.