different between fornication vs adultery

English

Etymology

From Middle English fornicacioun, from Old French fornicacion, from Latin fornic?ti?, from fornix (“brothel”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: fôr'n?-k?'sh?n, IPA^(key): /?f??n??ke???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

fornication (countable and uncountable, plural fornications)

1. (religion, law) Sexual intercourse by people who are not married, or which is considered illicit in another way.

   Hyponym: adultery

   • 1589 or 90, Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Act IV:

     FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed—

     BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country;

     And besides, the wench is dead.

   • 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act V, Scene 1:

     I am the sister of one Claudio,

     Condemned upon the act of fornication

     To lose his head, condemned by Angelo

   • 1816, Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England: From the Norman Conquest, in 1066, to the Year, 1803, page 623:

     In one case, where a man was sued for committing fornication with his wife before marriage, it appeared, that seven years after her death he was cited to stand as a prisoner at their bar, though he had lived with her for nine years, […]

   • 1893, The Southwestern Reporter, page 840:

     ... that he was a married man at the time is a necessary allegation, as the allegation that he was an unmarried man would have been necessary had he been charged with the crime of incest, by having committed fornication with his daughter.

   • 2013, Arthur W. Calhoun, The American Family in the Colonial Period, Courier Corporation (?ISBN)

     Thus, at Roxbury, 1678, Hanna Hopkins was censured in the church for fornication with her husband before marriage and for fleeing from justice into Rhode Island.

2. (colloquial) Sexual intercourse in general; sex.
   • 2012, Geoffrey Kennell, The Upper Crust, Xlibris Corporation (?ISBN), page 185:

     For a moment he stared at the back of the Lascar, wondering if he were the youth that he had disturbed during fornication with his Engineer, then dismissed all thoughts of the previous night, he was getting old, and suspicious, what did it matter […]

Synonyms

• see also Thesaurus:copulation

Derived terms

• fornicatory

Related terms

• fornicate

Translations

References

• fornication at OneLook Dictionary Search
• fornication in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Etymology

From the Old French scholarly form adultere (“violation of conjugal faith”) (in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons, 12c.), from Latin adulterium, from adulter. Replaced the older form avoutrie, from the popular Old French forms avouterie or aoulterie. Compare French adultère (“adultery”). Displaced Old English ?wbry?e. Not related to adult.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??d?lt??i/

Noun

adultery (countable and uncountable, plural adulteries)

1. Sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than their spouse.
   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, De Cive

     So also that copulation which in one City is Matrimony, in another will be judged Adultery.

   • 2009 Garner's Modern American Usage page 22

     Under modern statutory law, some courts hold that the unmarried participant isn't guilty of adultery (that only the married participant is)

2. (biblical) Lewdness or unchastity of thought as well as act, as forbidden by the seventh commandment.
3. (biblical) Faithlessness in religion.
4. (obsolete) The fine and penalty formerly imposed for the offence of adultery.
5. (ecclesiastical) The intrusion of a person into a bishopric during the life of the bishop.
6. (political economy) Adulteration; corruption.
7. (obsolete) Injury; degradation; ruin.

Synonyms

• advowtry (obsolete)

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• adultery in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• adultery in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.