Two questions:

For "polygamy", meaning multiple spouses, we have two separate subwords: "polyandry" (multiple husbands) and "polygyny" (multiple wives). But for "bigamy" (two spouses), there are no separate words meaning "two husbands" or "two wives". Any thoughts of why there should be sub-words for one of these words, but not the other?

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In my mind the terms call up very different images. With "polygamy" I think of a person (a man, let us say) living simultaneously with multiple wives in a single household; with "bigamy" he has moved from one household into a separate one with a separate woman (without having troubled to end the former marriage), or maintains two separate households simultaneously.

But none of this is in the dictionary definitions, under which the only difference is that "bigamy" meanns precisely two, and "polygamy" means two or more.

Do you see the words as I do, or as the dictionaries do?

Gosh, Wordnerd, you left out "monotony," or having just one spouse. And I suppose that a subset of polygamy is trigonometry.

...and here I thought "trigonometry" meant measuring the urinary bladder ?

*(more than you want to know about the TRIGONE)" (about a third of the way down)

All of which brings to mind the Groucho Marx quote:

"Why any man would want a wife is a mystery. Why a man would want two wives is a bigamystery."

quote:

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In my mind the terms call up very different images. With "polygamy" I think of a person (a man, let us say) living simultaneously with multiple wives in a single household; with "bigamy" he has moved from one household into a separate one with a separate woman (without having troubled to end the former marriage), or maintains two separate households simultaneously.

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Further, Wordnerd, I think of "polygamy" as perfectly normal (and legal) in other cultures, whereas I see "bigamy" as immoral and illegal. Interesting!

two wives is a
bigamystery."
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I thought that "bigamist" was an Italian fog.

Why does the Pygmy
Indulge in polygmy?
His tribal dogma
Frowns on monogma.
Monogma's a stigma
For any Pygma.
If he sticks to monogmy
A Pygmy's a hogmy.
- Ogden Nash

I think the best definition for a polygamist is "a glutton for punishment."

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog,
it's too dark to read.--Groucho Marx
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Are women ever polygamists? The dictionary says it can be a man or a women, but I have only heard of men being polygamists.

I note without comment the antepenultimate word in the first sentence.

NEW DELHI, Oct 24 (OneWorld) - Polyandry has been practised in the northern Indian hill state of Himachal Pradesh for the past 5,000 years, but is now recording a decline thanks to swelling male opposition. Around 20 percent of the families here practice a unique system of polyandry where a woman is married to more than one husband, all brothers from the same family.

It is mostly practised in places where land is limited. For instance, in Montong village in Kinnaur only 25 percent of the land is arable. "Land has long been precious, so keeping it all under one head and controlling the population was necessary," points out the village headman, Rangsing Negi. The solution was marrying all the sons in the family to one woman.

--Rakesh K. Simha, Many Husbands Make Woes For Indian Women, OneWorld South Asia, 24 October 2003