Agamy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The condition of never having married or of remaining unmarried throughout one's life
2. A state of not being wed to a spouse, particularly where someone has chosen or remained single
3. Unmarried status, meaning the absence of any marriage bond between a person and a partner

Etymology: Agamy is the state of not being married, and its history is a plain piece of Greek compounding. The Ancient Greek adjective "ágamos" meant "unmarried, single," and it was built from the negating prefix "a-," meaning "not," joined to "gamos," meaning "marriage." English took the term over directly from that Greek source. The second half, "-gamy," is the element that appears across a whole family of English words for marriage and its forms, such as monogamy and polygamy. Agamy therefore sits in that set as the simple negative: where monogamy names one spouse at a time, agamy names the absence of any spouse at all. The "a-" prefix is the same one found in words like "atheist" and "anarchy," where it likewise reverses the sense of the root that follows.

Antonyms: marriage