Word.ws English Dictionary

palimony

palimony noun: a form of alimony paid to a former partner in a nonmarital relationship.

Noun

palimony (uncountable)

  1. A form of alimony paid to a former partner in a nonmarital relationship.
    • Who won, huh? Nobody. Used to be sex was the only free thing, No longer. Alimony… palimony… it's all financial. Love is an illusion.1985, Joel Schumacher, Carl Kurlander, St. Elmo's Fire (motion picture), spoken by Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy)
    • Audball's latest pickup didn't seem to care where they were, or anything at all about alimony, palimony, or child support […]2002, James A. Abrahamson, Confessions of a Diplomatic Pouch Clerk, page 192

Origin of palimony

Blend of pal (“close friend”) + alimony (“maintenance”). Coined by celebrity divorce lawyer Marvin Mitchelson in 1977 in suit of his client Michelle Triola Marvin against the actor Lee Marvin.

Questions about palimony

What does palimony mean?
Palimony means a form of alimony paid to a former partner in a nonmarital relationship.
What part of speech is palimony?
Palimony is a noun.

Words near palimony in the dictionary

  1. palimbacchic
  2. palimbacchii
  3. palimbacchius
  4. Palimbang
  5. Palime
  6. palimony
  7. palimpcestuous
  8. palimpsest
  9. palimpsested
  10. palimpsestic
  11. palimpsestically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: palimony (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-palimony.wav.

Cite this entry: “palimony.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/palimony. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.