Agunah

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A woman who is unable to remarry in Jewish law due to her husband's absence or refusal to grant a divorce is known by a specific term
2. The term is used within Jewish legal contexts to describe a female who remains in marital limbo due to specific religious constraints
3. This designation refers to a woman whose legal status prevents her from entering another marriage because her husband has not provided a divorce document

Etymology: "Agunah" is a Hebrew word meaning "chained woman," and that image is the whole logic of the term. In Jewish law, a marriage ends properly only when the husband gives the wife a formal bill of divorce, the get, and she cannot remarry without it. A woman whose husband has disappeared, or who refuses to grant the get, is left bound to a marriage that has effectively ended, unable to remarry and unable to be released. The Hebrew "agunah" names exactly that condition. English borrowed the word directly from Hebrew, so it keeps the Hebrew sense of a woman held in a legal bond rather than acquiring a looser modern meaning. The word is used within Jewish legal discussion, and its metaphor of chains describes the constraint itself: she is not free to leave the marriage, nor free to build a new one.