Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of coverture While Northern women were trapped in coverture, Southern states were bypassing coverture specifically for the purpose of giving married women rights to own enslaved people. Trevon Logan, The Conversation, 10 June 2024 Heavenly Mother, according to our own doctrine, can’t be some wilting Victorian flower shrinking under the protective coverture of a strong man. The Salt Lake Tribune, 7 May 2022 The famous legal scholar William Blackstone had interpreted coverture rather strictly in the 1760s, and the American Revolution did nothing to change that. Washington Post, 25 Feb. 2022 That started to change by about the 18th century, when coverture laws—which counted wives as legal property of their husbands—grew more entrenched in Britain, and evolved to effectively forbid women from owning land at all. Michael Waters, The Atlantic, 27 Oct. 2021 In the nascent American Republic, where some humans could vote and most others were in coverture to their voting husbands or were the property of those men, the notion of majority representation was corrupted a priori. Shannon Pufahl, The New York Review of Books, 21 Apr. 2020 Coverture also meant that a man had largely unrestrained access to his wife’s body. Elizabeth Weingarten, The Atlantic, 15 June 2017 The answer partially lies in the practices of coverture, embedded in the old law of domestic relations that American colonists inherited from the British and didn’t change after the Revolution. Elizabeth Weingarten, The Atlantic, 15 June 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for coverture
Noun
  • The post also pulled back the veil, if only slightly, on the complex and secretive process federal officials use to determine who belongs on terrorism watch lists that can influence decisions every day by employers, airport security and law enforcement.
    Dan Horn, The Enquirer, 14 July 2025
  • Not only that, but Katie Gaudreau’s veil featured custom messages in her brothers’ handwriting.
    Miami Herald, Miami Herald, 14 July 2025
Noun
  • The parade is built to shine in the cloak of darkness, with an untold number of lighting effects.
    Dewayne Bevil, The Orlando Sentinel, 21 July 2025
  • The Shaun of the Dead actor, 53, was photographed in Hagrid's signature cloak and billowing hair and beard as production officially commences at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England.
    EW.com, EW.com, 15 July 2025
Noun
  • By June 2009, the boys — now men — had been released from prison and had their charges dismissed while a shroud of mystery remained over what happened that December night in 1991.
    Sean Neumann, People.com, 17 July 2025
  • Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study the dusty shrouds that envelope dying stars.
    Robert Lea, Space.com, 10 July 2025

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Coverture.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/coverture. Accessed 30 Jul. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on coverture

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!