jointure

From Old French < Latin iūnctūra.

jointure (plural jointures)

1. (obsolete) A joining; a joint.
2. (law) An estate settled on a wife, which she is to enjoy after her husband's death, for her own life at least, in satisfaction of dower.
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act III, Scene 3,

     Then, Warwick, thus: our sister shall be Edward’s;

     And now forthwith shall articles be drawn

     Touching the jointure that your king must make,

     Which with her dowry shall be counterpoised.

   • 1633, John Donne, Confined Love

     Beasts do no jointures lose

     Though they new lovers choose;

     But we are made worse than those.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Dublin: John Smith, Volume 2, Book 11, Chapter 5, p. 303,

     You tell me you are secure of having either the Aunt or the Niece, and that you might have married the Aunt before this, whose Jointure you say is immense, but that you prefer the Niece on account of her ready Money.

   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 9,

     The Baronet owed his son a sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he did not find it convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost invincible repugnance to paying anybody, and could only be brought by force to discharge his debts.

   • 1916, George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (postscript) in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, New York: Brentano’s, 1922, p. 214,

     Freddy had no money and no occupation. His mother’s jointure, a last relic of the opulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in Earlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to procure any serious secondary education for her children, much less give the boy a profession.

jointure (third-person singular simple present jointures, present participle jointuring, simple past and past participle jointured)

1. (transitive) To settle a jointure upon.
   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, London: J. Cooke, 1765, p. 170,

     He never so much as ask’d me about my Fortune or my Estate; but assured me that when we came to Dublin he would Jointure me in 600 l. a Year in good Land; and that he would enter into a Deed of Settlement, or Contract here, for the Performance of it.

• juncture

• jointure in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Latin iūnctūra.

• IPA^(key): /ʒwɛ̃.tyʁ/

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jointure f (plural jointures)

1. (anatomy) joint

• “jointure” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).