Coverture

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The legal condition of a married woman who loses independent rights and becomes subject to her husband's authority ; a covering or protective shelter
2. The condition in which a wife's legal identity is merged into her husband's under traditional common law ; something that provides cover or protection
3. The state of a married woman's legal subordination to her spouse's control ; a covering, roof, or means of concealment or defense

Etymology: Coverture was once the legal condition of a married woman in English common law: under the doctrine, a wife's legal existence was held to be merged into her husband's, so she could not own property or sue in her own name. The word itself is older than that legal sense. It came into Middle English by way of Old French "coverture," meaning a covering or shelter, built on "covrir," "to cover." The same Latin ancestor, "cooperire," also produced "couverture," so the two English words are doublets, one arriving through Old French and one through a later adaptation of the Latin. Its meaning moved from the physical to the legal. A "covert" was originally something that covers or shelters, and the idea of a wife being sheltered under her husband's protection gave the legal term its sense of a woman "under cover" of her husband's identity. Lawyers and writers of the period used the word to describe that dependent status, which is why it now appears mainly in discussions of legal history.

Synonyms: covering