adultery

1. 1.

   extramarital sex that willfully and maliciously interferes with marriage relations

   “adultery is often cited as grounds for divorce”

   Synonymscriminal conversationfornication

   Broaderextramarital sex

Other forms of adultery

plural

adulteries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about adultery

What does adultery mean?

adultery means "extramarital sex that willfully and maliciously interferes with marriage relations".

How many syllables are in adultery?

adultery has 4 syllables: a-dul-te-ry. The stress falls on "dul". In IPA it is /əˈdʌltɚi/.

What is another word for adultery?

Close synonyms include criminal conversation, fornication. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is adultery a common word?

adultery is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.