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casar(se) con hombre en base (Latin American Spanish) to get married when you’re already pregnant

Wedding lists

Female relatives of the Swahili groom perform a ritual called kupeka begi (send a bag) in which they bring to the bride gifts from her husband. In response, the bride’s female relations perform kupeka mswaki (bring the chewsticks), whereby they deliver to the groom a tray of toiletries. This is particularly important because the bride and groom are forbidden to meet before marriage.

The bride wore black

In the Tsonga language of South Africa qanda refers to the traditional bringing of an ox along with the bride as a symbol or guarantee of her future progeny. The ox is then eaten by her new husband’s family. She is not allowed to see any part of it; if she does she should say, ‘They killed my child.’ If language is our evidence, this is by no means the weirdest wedding event in the world:

trá-hôn (Vietnamese) to substitute another girl for the bride

faanifin maanoo (Mandinka, West Africa) a bride wearing black (signifying that she had sex with her future husband before the ceremony)

ii/fuya (Ndonga, Namibia) strips of meat from the wedding ox wound around the arm of the bridesmaid

infar-cake (Scots) a cake broken over the bride’s head as she crosses the threshold of her new home

Apron strings

Wives come in all styles:

ntshadi (Setswana, Botswana) a dear little wife

mon cinquante-pour-cent (French) wife (literally, my fifty per cent)

sokozuma (Japanese) a woman who settles for a so-so marriage just to get it out of the way

minekokon (Japanese) a woman who gives up a high-powered job in the city for a dull life in the country with a quiet husband

As do husbands:

mandilon (Mexican Spanish) a hen-pecked, oppressed husband (from mandil meaning apron)

stroin (Bengali) a married man who does everything and anything his wife says

tøffelhelt (Norwegian) someone who has nothing to say in a marriage or at home (literally, slipper hero)

mariteddu tamant’è un ditu Ièddu voli essa rivaritu (Corsican proverb) a husband must be respected, even if he’s very short

Green hat

We can only hope that neither of them has an urge to misbehave:

piniscar la uva (Chilean Spanish) to seduce a woman who’s already taken (literally, to grab the grape)

fanifikifihana (Malagasy, Madagascar) a charm for making another man’s wife disliked by her husband, or the husband by the wife

dài lümào (Chinese) implies that someone’s wife is unfaithful (literally, wearing a green hat)

kentenga (Tsonga, South Africa) to find oneself suddenly without some vital item (said of a man whose only wife has run away, or when the roof of a hut has blown off)

Recognized

Though sometimes such potentially destructive liaisons can be defused by being formalized:

kutua-na (Yamana, Chile) to give the second wife the place of the first in the wigwam

cicisbeo (Italian) an acknowledged lover of a married woman

chandek (Malay) a recognized concubine of a prince (as distinct from gundek, an inferior wife, or jamah-jamahan, a casual mistress)

antis (Manobo, Philippines) a father’s action, after his daughter’s adultery, when he gives his son-in-law another daughter as a second wife

Three’s a crowd

In some societies, of course, monogamy doesn’t even exist as an ideal, throwing up a whole new set of complications:

lefufa (Setswana, Botswana) the jealousy between the wives of one man

elungan (Manobo, Philippines) to divide one’s time equally between two wives who live in separate households

gintawan (Manobo, Philippines) the energy and industry of the first wife (when her husband takes an additional wife) as a result of the competition from the second wife

allupaareik (Iñupiat, Inuit) the return of a woman after a wife exchange

Hope springs eternal

In these days of rikonmiminenzo (Japanese), the divorce-promotion generation, things are never that simple in any case:

manàntom-bàdy (Malagasy, Madagascar) to put away a wife without divorcing her altogether

gila talak (Malay) a husband or wife who are