marry out

Verb

marry out (third-person singular simple present marries out, present participle marrying out, simple past and past participle married out)

1. To marry someone who is from another family; To avoid incest.
   • E. B. Tylor's idea that humans have only one choice, namely either to marry out or to die out, has become the most commonplace functional explanation. The necessity to marry out is always a corollary to the prohibition to marry sisters.1991, Trudeke Vuyk, Children of One Womb
   • Most of us take it for granted that we must marry out—that is, we cannot marry members of our immediate families.1994, Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, →ISBN, page 56
2. To marry someone from a different religion or ethnic group.
   • The opposite supposition is that younger people are more receptive to social change and unconventional ways, thus more likely to marry out at a higher rate.1990, Betty Lee Sung, Chinese American Intermarriage, →ISBN, page 27
   • The support of language proficiency associated with the home and endogamous marriage is absent in the case of women who marry out. In addition, men who marry out have more extrafamilial ethnic associations (visiting of Greek ethnic friends, memberships in Greek ethnic organizations) than women who...1994, Vasilikie Demos, Marcia Texler Segal, Ethnic Women: A Multiple Status Reality, →ISBN, page 90