Word.ws English Dictionary

a mensa et thoro

/eɪ ˈmɛnsə ˌɛt ˈθɔːɹəʊ/

a mensa et thoro adjective: that does not dissolve the marriage bond, but merely authorizes the husband and wife to live apart from each other.

Adjective

a mensa et thoro (not comparable)

  1. (historical) That does not dissolve the marriage bond, but merely authorizes the husband and wife to live apart from each other.
    • A divorce a mensa et thoro, obtained by the wife, is not a bar to her right of dower.1864, Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, Austin Abbott, A digest of New York Statutes and Reports: From the earliest period to the year 1860, 3rd edition, volume II, page 533
    • 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.2003, B. J. Sokol, Mary Sokol, Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage, page 144

Adverb

a mensa et thoro (not comparable)

  1. (historical) Such as not to dissolve the marriage bond, but merely to authorize the husband and wife to live apart from each other.
    • 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.1867, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, “Divorce a mensa et thoro”, in A Law Dictionary and Glossary, page 504

Origin of a mensa et thoro

Learned borrowing from Latin a mensa et thoro (“from board and bed”).

Questions about a mensa et thoro

What does a mensa et thoro mean?
A mensa et thoro means that does not dissolve the marriage bond, but merely authorizes the husband and wife to live apart from each other.
What part of speech is a mensa et thoro?
A mensa et thoro can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce a mensa et thoro?
A mensa et thoro is pronounced /eɪ ˈmɛnsə ˌɛt ˈθɔːɹəʊ/.

Words near a mensa et thoro in the dictionary

  1. a man is known by the company he keeps
  2. a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do
  3. a man's home is his castle
  4. A Mariña Occidental
  5. a matter
  6. a mensa et thoro
  7. a mile wide and an inch deep
  8. a mind is a terrible thing to waste
  9. A minor
  10. A minus
  11. A minuses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: a mensa et thoro (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “a mensa et thoro.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/a_mensa_et_thoro. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.