marry out

present singular third person marries out · participle present marrying out · participle past married out · past married out

1. To marry someone who is from another family; To avoid incest.

   Most of us take it for granted that we must marry out—that is, we cannot marry members of our immediate families.

   1994, Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, →ISBN, page 56

   2 more examples

   E. B. Tylor's idea that humans have only one choice, namely either to marry out or to die out, has become the most commonplace functional explanation. The necessity to marry out is always a corollary to the prohibition to marry sisters.

   1991, Trudeke Vuyk, Children of One Womb

   Over time, groups that marry out had an advantage over those that did not, so eventually all groups developed incest taboos.

   2008, James Peoples, Garrick Bailey, Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, →ISBN

2. To marry someone from a different religion or ethnic group.

   Jews who marry out — especially women who marry out, marry substantially later than Jews who marry in.

   1994, Steven Bayme, Gladys Rosen, The Jewish Family and Jewish Continuity, →ISBN, page 26

   2 more examples

   The opposite supposition is that younger people are more receptive to social change and unconventional ways, thus more likely to marry out at a higher rate.

   1990, Betty Lee Sung, Chinese American Intermarriage, →ISBN, page 27

   The support of language proficiency associated with the home and endogamous marriage is absent in the case of women who marry out. In addition, men who marry out have more extrafamilial ethnic associations (visiting of Greek ethnic friends, memberships in Greek ethnic organizations) than women who intermarry, giving intermarrying men greater support for Greek language proficiency than their female counterparts.

   1994, Vasilikie Demos, Marcia Texler Segal, Ethnic Women: A Multiple Status Reality, →ISBN, page 90