quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- morganatic
- morganatic: [18] A morganatic marriage is one between people of different social status, in which the rank and entitlements of the higherstatus partner are not shared by the lower or their offspring. The word morganatic is a survival of an ancient Germanic marriage custom. On the morning after the wedding night, after the marriage had been consummated, the husband gave the wife a symbolic gift, which removed any further legal claim the wife or their children might have on his possessions.
The term for this useful gift was *morgangeba, a compound formed from *morgan (ancestor of English morning) and *geba (a noun formed from the same base as produced English give). The word was adopted into medieval Latin as morganaticus, from which (via either French or German) English got morganatic.
=> morning, give - droit du seigneur (n.)
- 1784, alleged medieval custom whereby the feudal lord had the right to have sex with the bride of his vassal on their wedding night before she went to her husband, from French, literally "the lord's right." There is little evidence that it actually existed; it seems to have been invented in imagination 16c. or 17c. The Latin form was jus primae noctis, "law of the first night." For French droit, see right (adj.2).
- droit de seigneur
- "The alleged right of a medieval feudal lord to have sexual intercourse with a vassal’s bride on her wedding night", French, literally 'lord's right'.