Word of the Day Archive
Sunday June 19, 2011
virilocal \vir-uh-LOH-kuhl\
, adjective:
Living with or located near a husband's father's family.
By contrast, when marriage is virilocal, the ties between married women and their natal groups are commonly attenuated.
-- John Robert Shepherd, Statecraft and political economy on the Taiwan frontier, 1600-1800
According to tradition the Ngoni were a virilocal people, yet if a man went to live with his wife's relatives his own kinsfolk could not force him to return by appealing to this virilocal tradition.
-- John Arundel Barnes, Models and interpretations: selected essays
Virilocal combines the Latin roots Viri-, "man," and -local, "of a specific place."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for virilocal
