Word: nuptials
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...Wood Ants all over that part of Surrey chose Midsummer Day for their nuptial flight. No one was prepared for this in 1861--indeed, the young adults and the school-room inhabitants were all partaking of a strawberry picnic on the lawn when the swarming began, and hundreds of frantic, tumbling creatures, male and female, dropped out of the sky and into the cucumber sandwiches and the silver cream jugs, scurrying away in attached pairs, drowning in strawberry juice and Orange Pekoe, scrambling across spoons and lace doilies...
...this escalating terror will, oddly, increase the number of marriages taking place, even though we will see the divorce rate rise from 1 in 2 marriages to 2 in 2. These alarming statistics will cause the birth of a new nuptial tradition. Savvy couples will create the most intimate bond two people can share by agreeing to get married and divorced simultaneously. At that point, they will possess so much file data about each other that they will negotiate in advance the terms of every day they plan to spend together, deciding what annoying habits they are willing to tolerate...
...Among those 25 to 29, the unmarrieds included 43% of men and 29% of women in 1988, vs. 19% and 10% in 1970. The sheer disposability of marriage breeds skepticism. Kasey Geoghegan, 20, a student at the University of Denver and a child of divorced parents, believes nuptial vows have lost their credibility. Says she: "When people get married, ideally it's permanent, but once problems set in, they don't bother to work things...
...about any concoction to have their way with her. A scholarly study on the subject by Alan Hull Walton tells us that the pith from the branch of the pomegranate tree and the testes of animals were considered hot stuff. So were certain foods. "If envious age relax the nuptial knot," advised the poet Martial, "thy food be scallions, and thy feast shallot." Onions were a favorite, as were garlic, pepper, savory, cabbage, asparagus, eggs, pineapples, snails ("but without sauce," cautioned the fastidious Petronius) and just about any creature dredged from Aphrodite's watery birthplace...
There was no talk of divorce, no talk of pre-nuptial agreements, no mention of Al trying to run away with FloJo's money...