to marry off
14
5.1
- phrasal verb
- /ˈmɛri ɔf/
:
casar (a)
- After much discussion, the family decided to marry off their daughter to a suitable match.
If you start showing signs of withering or questioning, they marry you off fast.
- If you start showing signs of withering or questioning, they marry you off fast.
- They are destined to be domestic slaves, to be married off.
- Yeah, imagine that you want to marry off N boys with N girls.
- He's in the saga of, of Harold Harada, who is the king of Norway and he marries off one of his daughters to the, to that same king of, of, of Norway.
- So my mom decided that she needed to marry me off to somebody who was strong enough to control me.
Examples
-
Since they had two marriageable daughters, they would be able to marry off at least one of them to get the cash for Nan's wedding.
Fiction book (1994) -
In these sects, girls under the age of legal consent are married off to much older men.
Academic text (2010) -
So my mom decided that she needed to marry me off to somebody who was strong enough to control me.
-
So they were already married off and they had their own, you know, homes and families.
-
Most girls were married off right before their periods started or when they did.
Blog text (24) -
For example, I would marry off my two daughters and not take bride price money.
Academic text (1994) -
We always thought that we would marry off Kat first.
-
But first we must marry Omar off.
-
And you shouldn't rush to marry me off to someone else.
Fiction book (1991) -
I married her off to an English consul in Santiago.
Synonyms
11
9.6
To promise two people will marry each other in the future
1
6.7
To marry someone in a formal wedding ceremony
Surface Forms
Morphology
marry + off
The verb 'marry' gives the central meaning (to take as a spouse) and a learner can plausibly guess from context that 'marry off' means to cause or arrange someone to be married, since 'off' often marks a causative/transferal particle in phrasal verbs. However, the exact causative sense of 'off' is grammaticalized and phrasal-verb meanings are variable, so the meaning is not fully predictable from the parts alone.
Etymology
The expression marry off comes from the old idea of sending someone away when they married, with families arranging the wedding and sending a daughter off to her husband's home. So today marry off means 'to arrange or cause someone to get married'.