coverture

noun

cov·​er·​ture ˈkə-vər-ˌchu̇r 

-chər,

-ˌtyu̇r,

-ˌtu̇r

1

a

: covering

b

: shelter

2

: the status a woman acquires upon marriage under common law

Synonyms

• blanket
• cloak
• cope
• cover
• cover-up
• covering
• curtain
• hood
• mantle
• mask
• pall
• penumbra
• robe
• shroud
• veil
• wraps

Examples of coverture in a Sentence

under the coverture of a raging snowstorm, the rebels undertook their surprise attack on the fortress

Recent Examples on the Web

While Northern women were trapped in coverture, Southern states were bypassing coverture specifically for the purpose of giving married women rights to own enslaved people. —Trevon Logan, The Conversation, 10 June 2024

Heavenly Mother, according to our own doctrine, can’t be some wilting Victorian flower shrinking under the protective coverture of a strong man. —The Salt Lake Tribune, 7 May 2022

The famous legal scholar William Blackstone had interpreted coverture rather strictly in the 1760s, and the American Revolution did nothing to change that. —Washington Post, 25 Feb. 2022

That started to change by about the 18th century, when coverture laws—which counted wives as legal property of their husbands—grew more entrenched in Britain, and evolved to effectively forbid women from owning land at all. —Michael Waters, The Atlantic, 27 Oct. 2021

In the nascent American Republic, where some humans could vote and most others were in coverture to their voting husbands or were the property of those men, the notion of majority representation was corrupted a priori. —Shannon Pufahl, The New York Review of Books, 21 Apr. 2020

Coverture also meant that a man had largely unrestrained access to his wife’s body. —Elizabeth Weingarten, The Atlantic, 15 June 2017

The answer partially lies in the practices of coverture, embedded in the old law of domestic relations that American colonists inherited from the British and didn’t change after the Revolution. —Elizabeth Weingarten, The Atlantic, 15 June 2017

Word History

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Legal Definition

coverture

noun

cov·​er·​ture ˈkə-vər-ˌchu̇r, -chər 

: the inclusion of a woman in the legal person of her husband upon marriage under common law

Note: Because of coverture, married women formerly did not have the legal capacity to hold their own property or contract on their own behalf. These disabilities have been removed for the most part by statute.

Etymology

Anglo-French, literally, shelter, covering, from Old French, from covert, past participle of covrir to cover