handfasted

Verb

handfast (third-person singular simple present handfasts, present participle handfasting, simple past and past participle handfasted)

1. (transitive) To pledge; to bind.
2. (Scotland, transitive, archaic or historical except Wicca) To betroth by joining hands, in order to allow for cohabitation before the celebration of marriage; to marry provisionally.
   • No, Sir Priest or Sir Preacher, Catherine is not my wife— […] she is not my wife, but she is handfasted with me, and that makes her as honest a woman. [...] When we are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and a day—that space gone by, each may chuse another mate, or, at their...1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John...

See all 6 meanings of handfast