
Related to polyandry: fraternal polyandry


see marriagemarriage,
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a form of plural marriage (POLYGAMY) where a woman has more than one husband. It is regarded as a functional strategy for ensuring reproductive stability when there is a shortage of women. Compare POLYGYNY.



a rare vestigial form of group marriage in which one woman has several husbands. In the 19th century, polyandry was still extant, particularly among the Aleuts and some groups of Eskimos; it existed even later among some ethnographic groups of Tibet and Hindustan. Polyandry may be fraternal, as among the Tibetans, or unrelated, as in South India.


1. the practice or condition of being married to more than one husband at the same time
2. the practice in animals of a female mating with more than one male during one breeding season
3. the condition in flowers of having a large indefinite number of stamens
References in periodicals archive ?
(3) Most of the anthropological studies on Tibetan polyandry have been conducted in Nepal, and not in Tibet proper.
Polyandry and multiple paternity was recorded almost a century ago also in the North American pygmy grasshoppers Apotettix eurycephalus and Paratettix texanus (Nabours 1929).
Polyandry and fecundity in the Lepidoptera: can methodological and conceptual approaches bias outcomes?
And most importantly, she explains the value of Esmeralda's polyandry, contrasting it with her own situation, trapped with several children and a cheating husband.
Some sociologists report a rebirth of polyandry one wife, several husbands--in the countryside, and there's no particular reason it shouldn't spread into the cities as well.
Many of the shorter items (like consignee and polygamy; polyandry; polygyny) address pronunciation or explicate a Venn diagram of definition, work a basic dictionary could do.
Behavioral ecologists have made important contributions to understandings of why certain marriage systems arise and persist in conjunction with subsistence mode--for example, why polyandry (marriage of one woman to multiple men) exists in only one percent of human societies, including Himalayan groups, where land shortage makes households viable only with multiple males.
." Nasr enthusiastically quotes Titus Burckhardt's rationale for Islam's approval of polygyny and rejection or polyandry, along with the right of Muslim men, but not women, to marry Christians or Jews: "Man, as spiritual officiant (imam) of his family, represents the Truth; his role corresponds to the 'active' vessel, namely the Spirit, whereas his wife corresponds to the 'passive' vessel, namely the soul." Huh?
Just as in Scripture and tradition, a central and indispensable correlation between monotheism and monogamy has been discerned and affirmed, yet wi thout requiring the instantaneous and intransigent rejection of concubinage, polyandry or polygamy, or even interracial and/or interfaith marriage as a test case of the obedience of faith, so the foundational and liberating instance of heterosexuality as a parable of human fulfillment does not require an intransigent rejection of homosexuality as a test case of the obedience of faith.
Both systematic distribution and different patterns indicate that polyandry in asterids has evolved a number of times and even more than once within some families.
By my calculations, approximately 2.3, although, strangely enough, the conservative marriage advocates are not offering to abolish the laws against polyandry.
The "anxiety" provoked by women like Hersilia playing roles in public life while having ambivalent kinship offered "a fantasy of joint possession, if not polyandry ...