Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of coverture 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
Recent Examples of Synonyms for coverture
Noun
  • But during the visit, Melania Trump mostly wore a grim face — along with a black dress and lace veil, in accordance with the dress code for a papal visit, according to media accounts at the time.
    Martha Ross, Mercury News, 22 Apr. 2025
  • Typically, the pontiff’s body is placed in a casket made of three materials—cypress, lead, and walnut—and then covered with a silk veil before being sealed and transported under the basilica to the Vatican Grottoes, where the remains of almost all his predecessors rest.
    Paolo Armelli, Vogue, 21 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • The male figure wears a simple toga, while the woman wears a large cloak over a tunic and many accessories.
    Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Apr. 2025
  • The white marble sculpture, which is missing a head and arms, appears to depict a woman's torso draped in a loose dress or cloak.
    Leah Sarnoff, ABC News, 23 Jan. 2025
Noun
  • Cardinals from across the globe will soon gather under a shroud of secrecy at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City to decide who will lead the Catholic Church and guide 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide.
    Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 23 Apr. 2025
  • The floors of the Indonesian Hospital in the city were covered in blood, with bodies wrapped in shrouds laying on the floor in hallways.
    Daniel Estrin, NPR, 20 Mar. 2025

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Coverture.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/coverture. Accessed 1 May. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on coverture

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!