Hypergamy

//haɪˈpɚɡəmi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Act or practice of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status or caste status than oneself. uncountable, usually

    "From 1940 to the mid-1970s, the tendency for men to marry down educationally became more pronounced and the cultural ideal of hypergamy — that women must marry up — became more insistent."

Synonyms

All synonyms
marry upmarrying up

Example

More examples

"From 1940 to the mid-1970s, the tendency for men to marry down educationally became more pronounced and the cultural ideal of hypergamy — that women must marry up — became more insistent."

Etymology

From hyper- + -gamy.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.