nubility
noun1
Usually The property or state of being nubile.
- It's certainly no disgrace to have been ripped off by a pretty-faced hustler--who among us has not mistaken nubility for genius?1993 June 11, Mary Shen Barnidge, “Mean Tears”, in Chicago Reader:
- In France, more than half the women who have reached the age of nubility are married; in Ireland, generally speaking, less than a third.1922, Henry Stanton, Sex:
2 more examples
- Among the northern clans of the Thonga tribe, in South-Eastern Africa, about Delagoa Bay, when a girl thinks that the time of her nubility is near, she chooses an adoptive mother, perhaps in a neighbouring village.1913, Sir James George Frazer, Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I.:
- Among most modern nations, the civil laws fixing the earliest date of marriage seem to have been made without any reference to physiology, or with the mistaken notion that puberty and nubility are identical.1881, John Harvey Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young:
- Synonyms
- marriageable
- Related terms
- nubile