Word.ws English Dictionary

bigam

bigam noun: a bigamist, or one who has married a widow.

Noun

bigam (plural bigams)

  1. (archaic, rare) A bigamist, or one who has married a widow.
    • If he were irreguler, suspende, excommunycate, bygame, illegittime, or concubinarie open and knowen, & by the consequens suspende at the tyme & houre that he receyved the dygnyte, the cure, or prelacyon he synneth mortally and is contynually in deedly synne...1502, anonymous author, The Ordinary of Christian Men, London: Wynkyn de Worde, page 234
    • The Asiatic queens, sultanas, and bigams, scarcely ever appear in public. They abide in the Haram, in the greatest luxury and spelendour...1823, A. Clarke, The Latter Day Luminary, volume IV, number X, page 344

Examples of bigam in a sentence

  • "Some parts of the scripture teach us positive ordinances of Christ, as are the sacraments; and some parts thereof teach us ordinances of some apostle, as the law of bigamy, or St.1744, John Lewis, The Life of the Learned and Right Reverend Reynold Pecock, S.T.P., Lord Bishop of St. Asaph and Chichester, London: John...
  • On the death of Alexander, her husband, Hermione, a chatelaine, discovers that he was a bigam on the one hand, and a swindler on the other.2024, Criticker Films & TV, A notre regrettable époux:

Forms of bigam

pluralbigams

Origin of bigam

From Latin bigamus (“twice married”): compare French bigame. See bigamy.

Questions about bigam

What does bigam mean?
Bigam means a bigamist, or one who has married a widow.
How do you use bigam in a sentence?
"Some parts of the scripture teach us positive ordinances of Christ, as are the sacraments; and some parts thereof teach us ordinances of some apostle, as the law of bigamy, or St.
What part of speech is bigam?
Bigam is a noun.
What is the plural of bigam?
The plural of bigam is bigams.

Words near bigam in the dictionary

  1. bigae
  2. bigah
  3. bigahs
  4. Bigajo
  5. Bigalke
  6. bigam
  7. bigamic
  8. bigamie
  9. bigamies
  10. bigamist
  11. bigamistic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bigam (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: “bigam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bigam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.