Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A descent group traced through women on the maternal side of a family.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The line of descent traced through the maternal side of the family; the mother's line of descent.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun line of descent traced through the maternal side of the family
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word matrilineage.
Examples
-
A similar kind of onomastic matrilineage is established through a practice Junod, around the turn of the century, described as the most frequent method of infant-naming among the Tsonga, and through which many of the eldest interviewees had received their birth name: consulting the divining bones to obtain the name of an ancestor so as to kupfuxa (wake up) that ancestor's spirit in the person of the child.
Where Women Make History: Gendered Tellings of Community and Change in Magude, Mozambique 2005
-
Kwere speakers also note tombo to name the matrilineage of the * - kolo matriclan.
-
While the outward sociopolitical prominence of the matrilineage were weakened in the colonial period of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sociocultural and religious aspects supporting and empowering the matrilineage did not cease.
-
Even in the face of increasing focus on patrilineages in coastal communities, and contemporaneous exchanges with patrilineal Njombe -, Eastern-Sahelian -, and Cushitic-speaking populations on their northern and western borders, Ruvu societies did not relent from keeping the prominence of the matrilineage entrenched in their cultures.
-
It may be that because of a girl's anticipated contribution to her matrilineage and its associated social and religious windfalls, communities were especially concerned that she be properly prepared for motherhood.
-
In their societies, it was understood necessary for a young man to persuade a young woman's matrilineage, usually her maternal grandmother and eldest uncle, that he was worthy of their lineal daughter.
-
He acted as the messenger who brought the request for marriage to the elders of the young woman's matrilineage, often her grandmother and maternal uncle.
-
It could have been the time when potential marriage partners were alerted to a possible wife, which would have given her suitors time to gather the necessary and valuable items her matrilineage demanded for permission to marry.
-
They practiced uxorilocal marriage, and they managed inheritance along the line of a woman's matrilineage.
-
It also expressed the significance of the matrilineage and its spiritual and physical link to a common first female.
slumry commented on the word matrilineage
Line of descent as traced through women on the maternal side of the family.
July 21, 2007
sionnach commented on the word matrilineage
art
February 17, 2010