concubine
noun
con·cu·bine
| \ ˈkäŋ-kyu̇-ˌbīn
, ˈkän-, -kyü-\
, ˈkän-, -kyü-\
Definition of concubine
: a woman with whom a man cohabits without being married: such as
a
: one having a recognized social status in a household below that of a wife
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Synonyms for concubine
Synonyms
doxy (also doxie), mistress, other woman
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Examples of concubine in a Sentence
spent an exorbitant sum on furnishing living quarters for his concubine
Recent Examples on the Web
Vajiralongkorn, also known as King Rama X, named Sineenatra the new Royal Noble Consort, the official title for the chief concubine, earlier this month, making her the first official mistress of the king since 1921. — Fox News, "Thailand releases rare pictures of king and official mistress, causing royal website to crash," 27 Aug. 2019 Henry, for his part, relishes Eve like a concubine while his wife writes poetry downstairs. — Pete Tosiello, Washington Post, "Karen Dukess’s ‘The Last Book Party’ is a postcard from another era," 10 July 2019 Her mother was the sixth concubine to a wealthy businessman who abandoned them and her younger brother when Wu was a child. — Quanta Magazine, "Three Major Physics Discoveries and Counting," 18 July 2018 Royal gardens, peeling frescoes, and tiled mosaics are breathtaking in their beauty, but the zenith of any visit is a wander through the sultan’s harem, once home to hundreds of concubines and their eunuch guards. — Ashlea Halpern, Condé Nast Traveler, "Three Days In Istanbul," 28 Dec. 2018 The story is about a concubine of Grenada’s royal court, Fatima, and her friend Hassan, the court’s cartographer. — Andrew Liptak, The Verge, "All the science fiction and fantasy books we’re looking forward to in 2019," 30 Dec. 2018 The swells, the potentates would have gone off with their concubines and pet slaves and soldier guards . . . — Lance Morrow, WSJ, "Did Chivalry Go Down With the Titanic?," 14 Dec. 2018 According to former follower Niki Lopez, who later testified against York in court, children were forced to live separately from their parents and were beaten with wire hangers and broom sticks and sometimes starved by York’s concubines. — Christine Pelisek, PEOPLE.com, "The Story Behind a Black Supremacist Cult That Lived in Egyptian-Themed Compound in Rural Georgia," 6 July 2018 Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family: Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor. — Deneen L. Brown, Washington Post, "Meghan Markle, Queen Charlotte and the wedding of Britain’s first mixed-race royal," 15 May 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'concubine.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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More Definitions for concubine
concubine
noun
English Language Learners Definition of concubine
: an unmarried woman who has sex with a man and lives with the man and his wife or wives
See the full definition for concubine in the English Language Learners Dictionary