How to Use dowry in a Sentence

dowry

noun
  • The groom couldn’t pay the dowry of 10 camels and 10 cattle to marry her.
    — Scott Armstrong, The Christian Science Monitor, 30 July 2017
  • But the state’s dowry bought more than a dashing groom.
    — The Economist, 21 Oct. 2017
  • The idea goes back to the time when dowries were all that women brought to the table.
    — Madeleine Luckel, Vogue, 19 June 2017
  • The man paid a dowry of about $850, and after the agent and the officiant took their cuts, she was left with about half that.
    — Stephanie Yang, Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 2024
  • Our parents use us as a source of income through dowry.
    — Sarah Ferguson, Forbes, 13 Sep. 2021
  • The husband hadn’t paid the dowry and her father didn’t like the way she was being treated.
    — Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017
  • She is later forced to re-marry by her mother-in-law for the dowry.
    — Jane Li, Quartz, 4 Dec. 2019
  • In the past, there was a tradition of including a chess set with a bride’s dowry.
    — Inna Lazareva, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2020
  • Baher didn’t know how she was supposed to afford the dowries.
    — Rebecca Tan, Washington Post, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Okello, whose real name is Kel, is an ex-con who works for a dowry scam.
    — Tanya Melendez, EW.com, 29 May 2023
  • A Chinese wedding comes with lots of perks: cash from the guests and often a dowry from the bride’s family and a house from the groom’s.
    — WSJ, 20 Mar. 2017
  • On paper, marrying UTC seems to come with a dowry for Raytheon.
    — Jon Sindreu, WSJ, 20 June 2019
  • Women feel a lot of pressure to marry young to get a dowry for the family.
    — Jessica Andrews, Teen Vogue, 18 Apr. 2018
  • What’s more, Burton had promised a generous dowry to be paid at the end of the season, in time for the start of the fall semester.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Because when you're married off, the [husbands] pay dowry.
    — Jessica Andrews, Teen Vogue, 18 Apr. 2018
  • Because when you're married off, the [husbands] pay dowry.
    — Jessica Andrews, Teen Vogue, 18 Apr. 2018
  • That meant being more than a mother and a wife, more than a woman for whom a suitable dowry was a cow of three years.
    — Longreads, 6 Apr. 2021
  • Legend has it, Ruven Perelman made the one-off in 1992 for his daughter’s dowry.
    — Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 24 June 2022
  • Brides come with huge gifts, dowries, that were once the only property that a woman could call her own.
    — A.a. Gill, A-LIST, 4 July 2018
  • Brides come with huge gifts, dowries, that were once the only property that a woman could call her own.
    — A.a. Gill, A-LIST, 4 July 2018
  • Nannina was betrothed at the age of 13 for a large dowry and brought to her husband’s house five years later.
    — Pragya Agarwal, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Mar. 2024
  • The post said five men were participating in the auction for her dowry.
    — Casey Newton, The Verge, 14 Nov. 2018
  • The post said five men were participating in the auction for her dowry.
    — Casey Newton, The Verge, 14 Nov. 2018
  • After around a year of healing, her father gave her to a 70-year-old man to be his fifth wife, in exchange for a dowry of three cows.
    — Erika W. Smith, refinery29.com, 12 Feb. 2020
  • Nobody, in the Western democracies at least, pays a dowry.
    — Time, 28 June 2023
  • She’s set to be married off for a substantial dowry in livestock.
    — Murtada Elfadl, Variety, 7 Dec. 2024
  • Her large dowry could then be invested in his sulfur mine.
    — Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books, 23 Feb. 2021
  • The dowry comes in many forms, including money, but some choose cattle.
    — Tim Spector, CNN, 5 July 2017
  • According to legend, Saint Nicholas gave three gold balls to a poor man who couldn’t afford dowries for his three daughters.
    — Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 3 Dec. 2024
  • Her impoverished family near the southern Iraqi city of Basra hoped that the dowry of gold and money would help improve their circumstances.
    — Stella Martany and Kareem Chehayeb, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dowry.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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