Meanings
- uncountableThe state of having eight spouses simultaneously.
The best wardmaster in Scutari had eight wives—I mean eight wives alive—at different stations. […] He was tried when he came home at Warwick Assizes for what was euphoniously called bigamy, but was octogamy.
1888, Florence Nightingale, letter to Maude Verney dated 2 February 1888, published in Lynn McDonald, Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family (2010), page 7132 more examples
I regret to say John has never had that pleasure yet; but if the "Honourable" Herbert D'Aulnoy should darken my doors again, I should feel it my duty to communicate certain facts about him to Sir Richard Mayne and Mr. Pollaky, and to ensure his conviction for bigamy, trigamy, quadrigamy, or perhaps octogamy, at the Old Bailey.
1865 March 25, Vere Haldane, “'Would-Be Wives, Beware!': A Caution Founded On Fact”, in Once A Week, page 378The author devotes almost an entire page of the essay to rewriting [Mary Elizabeth] Braddon's fiction, replacing bigamy with octogamy and inventing a sensation author who, writing between meals, creates three murderous polygamist heroines in one day--including one who, having poisoned twenty-seven lovers, flies off "to sunny Italy ... with the stable boy."
2011, Joyce E. Kelley, "Beating them to the Punch: satirizing sensation from the 1860s comic journal to Braddon's The Doctor's Wife", Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, Spring 2011
Origin
From octo- + -gamy. Compare Middle English octogamie.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
octogamy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/octogamy
“octogamy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/octogamy. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “octogamy,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/octogamy.
Source: octogamy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.