Word.ws English Dictionary

adultry

adultry is the obsolete form of adultery.

Meaning of adultery

Noun

adultery (countable and uncountable, plural adulteries)

  1. (strictly) Sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than their spouse. See more synonyms at Thesaurus:cuckoldry
    • She engaged in adultery because her spouse has a low libido, while hers is very high.
  2. (broadly) Lewdness or unchastity of thought as well as act, as forbidden by the sixth/seventh commandment; sinful sexual behavior as a category.
    • Thou shalt not commit adultery.
  3. Faithlessness in religion.
    • And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 3:9
  4. (obsolete) The fine and penalty formerly imposed for the offence of adultery.
  5. The intrusion of a person into a bishopric during the life of the bishop.
  6. (political economy) Adulteration; corruption.

See all 7 meanings of adultery

Questions about adultry

What is adultry the obsolete form of?
Adultry is the obsolete form of adultery.

Words near adultry in the dictionary

  1. adultophiles
  2. adultophilia
  3. adultophilic
  4. adultress
  5. adultresses
  6. adultry
  7. adults
  8. adults in the room
  9. adultship
  10. adultspeak
  11. adultswear

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adultry (page history and authors); adultery (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: “adultry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/adultry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.