Word.ws English Dictionary

parapherna

parapherna noun: a woman's property which was not made a part of her marriage dower, but remained her own.

Noun

parapherna pl (plural only)

  1. (Ancient-Rome, historical, plural, plural-only) A woman's property which was not made a part of her marriage dower, but remained her own.

Synonyms of parapherna

Origin of parapherna

From Late Latin parapherna, from Ancient Greek παράφερνα (parápherna, “things additional to a dowry”), from παρα- (para-, “beside”) + φερνή (phernḗ, “dowry”). In the propertied classes, a dowry was placed under the control of the husband, while the 'paraphernalia' which she brought with her remained the wife’s property.

Questions about parapherna

What does parapherna mean?
Parapherna means a woman's property which was not made a part of her marriage dower, but remained her own.
What part of speech is parapherna?
Parapherna is a noun.

Words near parapherna in the dictionary

  1. paraphed
  2. paraphenomenal
  3. paraphenylene
  4. paraphenylenediamine
  5. paraphenylenediamines
  6. parapherna
  7. paraphernal
  8. paraphernalia
  9. paraphernalian
  10. paraphernals
  11. parapheromone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parapherna (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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