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Webster 1913 Edition


Mesalliance


Méˊsalˊliˊance′

,
Noun.
[F.]
A marriage with a person of inferior social position; a misalliance.

Definition 2024


mésalliance

mésalliance

English

Noun

mésalliance (plural mésalliances)

  1. Marriage with a person of inferior social position.
    • Aylmer and Louise Maude translation of Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace:
      But if you marry the old count you will make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand...the prince would no longer be making a mésalliance by marrying you.
    • 1871–72, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 37
      It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mésalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread.
    • William Makepeace Thackeray:
      In England, a grocer's daughter would think she made a mésalliance by marrying a painter!
    • Mohun Dampier, "Beyond the Walls", Ambrose Bierce:
      To a mésalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition.

Anagrams


French

Etymology

From mésalli(er) + -ance.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /me.za.ljɑ̃s/

Noun

mésalliance f (plural mésalliances)

  1. misalliance, mésalliance