a mensa et thoro
/eɪ ˈmɛnsə ˌɛt ˈθɔːɹəʊ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.18 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
That does not dissolve the marriage bond, but merely authorizes the husband and wife to live apart from each other.
adv
Such as not to dissolve the marriage bond, but merely to authorize the husband and wife to live apart from each other.
Example Sentences
- "A divorce a mensa et thoro, obtained by the wife, is not a bar to her right of dower."
- "The long-defunct possibility of a divorce for adultery allowing remarriage was proposed anew by Cranmer,²⁵ who considered that a divorce a mensa et thoro offended against the duty to cohabit insisted on by the Church."
- "Under specific circumstances, two other kinds of marriage termination, both called divorce (divorcium), could be declared by the ecclesiastical courts of late medieval England: divorce a mensa et thoro ( “from table and bed”) and divorce a vinculo (“from the bond”).[…]Divorce a mensa et thoro resulted in what we would term separation."
- "By the recent statute 20 & 21 Viet c. 85, § 7, no divorce can in future be granted à mensa et thoro, but a decree of judicial separation is to be pronounced, having the like effect."