- 1嫁妝
A dowry is the money, land, jewellery, or other goods that a woman (or, more often, her family) gives at marriage, usually to her husband or his family. In some countries this is still a real, serious part of getting married; in many English-speaking places you mainly meet it in history, novels, or news about somewhere else. Though actually, people also stretch the word: they may joke that someone 'brings a dowry' meaning a house, savings, or a good job, even when nobody is following the old custom. It is not a bride price, which travels the other way — from the man's side to the woman's family. And it is not quite the same as dower, an older English legal word for what a widow could claim from her husband's property after he died. Dowry can sound slightly formal or textbook-like; ordinary talk more often says 'what her family gave when she married.'
From the word’s history
From Anglo-Norman dowarie, from Old French douaire, from Medieval Latin dotarium, from Latin dos.
經英法語、古法文 douaire，源自拉丁文 dōs「嫁妝」。
組成From Middle English dowarye / dowerie, from Anglo-Norman and Old French douaire, from Medieval Latin dōtārium, from Latin dōs, a gift given at marriage. Doublet of dower.
同家族的字
- dowersame Latin root; a doublet — dower is the widow's share of a husband's property, not the bride's marriage gift
- endowfrom the same French 'give a dowry' family; now mostly 'give money or a gift to support something'
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
dowrynoun/ˈdaʊəɹi/
- 1
Payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.
- 2
Payment by the groom or his family to the bride's family.
- The family of the groom makes sure the new couple has a house to live in and land to cultivate; they will also pay for the dowry (crucial, for without dowry the new father has no rights over his children; Trouwborst 1962: 136ff.)
- 3
obsoleteInheritance from a deceased husband to his widow.
- 4
A natural gift or talent.
- 5
informalA large amount.
- But no palace had so fair a ceiling; for from the wooden beams were suspended a whole dowry of copper vessels—pails, cauldrons, water pots, of every colour from lustrous black to the palest pink.
dowryverb/ˈdaʊəɹi/
- 1
To bestow a dowry upon.
- 1976, Graham Anderson, Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction, Page 19
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。