Mésalliance

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /mɛˈzæli.É™ns/
• US IPA: /meɪzəˈlaɪəns/
• Rhymes: dalliance

Origin

, from mésallier ("to misally").

Full definition of mésalliance

Noun

1. Marriage with a person of inferior social position.
• Aylmer and Louise Maude translation of Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace:But if you marry the old count you will make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand...the prince would no longer be making a mésalliance by marrying you.
• Eliot Middlemarch|37It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mésalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread.
• William Makepeace Thackeray:In England, a grocer's daughter would think she made a mésalliance by marrying a painter!
• Mohun Dampier, , Ambrose Bierce:To a mésalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition.

Anagrams

• miscellanea