inchastity

English

Etymology

From in- +‎ chastity: compare French inchasteté.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ɪnˈt͡ʃæstɪti/

Noun

inchastity (countable and uncountable, plural inchastities)

(rare) Absence of chastity; the quality of being unchaste.
- 2003, Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, 350–450 AD, Routledge, →ISBN, page 66:
  In pre-Christian Roman belief it might be held as better not to indulge in extramarital sex, as a courtesy more than a due to one’s partner, or because character was believed to derive from having the strength to resist vice […] but, such rationalisations aside, male inchastity did not matter as such. Female inchastity could threaten bloodlines and property transfer, and so from the earliest times very much did matter: […] in fact, Chrysostom refutes in detail the legal position that only women’s inchastity signified in marriage, in a passage so full of reproach and repetition […] that we may infer that he too is meeting a dead weight of inertia, if not active opposition, from his hearers.
- 2008, Eleanor Cashin-Ritaine, Laetitia Franck, Shaheeza Lalani, editors, Legal Engineering and Comparative Law/L’ingénierie juridique et le droit comparé, Schulthess, →ISBN, page 199:
  The relevant Qur’anic verse (Ayât) is very similar to the English law on slander per se and the imputation of inchastity for women.
- 2012, Tom MacFaul, Problem Fathers in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 207:
  Having found out about the wife’s inchastity, Geraldine does not need his father’s exhortations to stay away from Wincott’s house. […] He rebukes the wife for her inchastity – and she dies of shame, conveniently leaving a letter of confession.

Synonyms

unchastity

References

“inchastity”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.