conjugality

plural conjugalities

1. countableuncountableThe condition of being conjugal.

   The conjugality of the court and jail is confessed by putting the two under the same roof, or by joining them together.

   1906, George E. Macdonald, “Unbidden Thoughts”, in Liberty, volume 15, number 6, page 40

   1 more example

   He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That was what he though, if he thought at all.

   1894, Francis Marion Crawford, Casa Braccio, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, Part II, Chapter 26, p. 79

2. countableuncountableThe conjugal state; marriage; sexual intercourse.

   She and Mr. van der Luyden were so exactly alike that Archer often wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as controversial as a talking-over.

   1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, Book I, Chapter 7

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   And if it be true both in divinity and law, that consent alone, though copulation never follow, makes a marriage; how can they dissolve it for the want of that which made it not, and not dissolve it for that not continuing which made it and should preserve it in love and reason, and difference it from a brute conjugality?

   1645, John Milton, “Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the four chief places in Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage”, in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: In Two Books: Also the Judgement of Martin Bucer; Tetrachordon; and an Abridgement of Colasterion, London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, published 1820, page 260

   […] the most entertaining was the quarrel that followed Mrs. McLash’s sneering because the bride and groom occupied the same bed on the night before their marriage […] [Tim] tried to defend the couple by saying that all engaged couples enjoyed conjugality even though they might not be honest enough to show that they did in public.

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XIII, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 223