child bride

English

Alternative forms

• child-bride, childbride

Etymology

Compound of child +‎ bride.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Northern California):

  (file)

Noun

child bride (plural child brides)

1. A very young bride, usually coerced or pressured into nuptials with a much older man, as practiced in some cultures.

   Coordinate term: child groom

   Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that allow minor girls to be child brides.

   • 1878, Frank Leslie's Sunday magazine, Volumes 3-4, page 206

     With a smile and baksheesh for the little fair-faced girl destined to be the child-bride of some unknown Egyptian

   • 1912, Metropolitan, Volume 36, page 1

     Alone in [he]r tent the frightened child-bride [w]aits her husband, who will see her... [sic] ...for the first time.

   • 1993 Alixa Naf, Becoming American, page 142

     Ohio, where she had peddled with her parents until she became a child bride to Salem's brother Khalil, in 1896

   • 2008, Hafiza Nilofar Khan, The University of Southern Mississippi, Treatment of a wife's body in the fiction of Indian subcontinental women writers, page 46

     In this article she discusses the 1992 incident in which a Hyderabadi Muslim father sells his daughter as a child-bride to an Arab named Yahya Mohammed al-Sageih for Rs. 6000.

Translations

very young bride

• Arabic: عُرُوس طِفْلَة f (ʕurūs ṭifla)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 童養媳 / 童养媳 (zh) (tóngyǎngxí)

• Danish: barnebrud (da) c
• Finnish: lapsimorsian
• French: enfant mariée m
• Italian: sposa bambina f
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: barnebrud m or f

  Nynorsk: barnebrud f

• Portuguese: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: малоле́тняя неве́ста f (malolétnjaja nevésta)
• Spanish: novia niña f, novia menor de edad f