How to Use dowry in a Sentence

dowry

noun
  • The idea goes back to the time when dowries were all that women brought to the table.
    — Madeleine Luckel, Vogue, 19 June 2017
  • Baher didn’t know how she was supposed to afford the dowries.
    — Rebecca Tan, Washington Post, 7 Apr. 2023
  • The princess, in turn, could offer Greenland as a dowry.
    — Martha Ross, Mercury News, 8 Jan. 2026
  • She is later forced to re-marry by her mother-in-law for the dowry.
    — Jane Li, Quartz, 4 Dec. 2019
  • Okello, whose real name is Kel, is an ex-con who works for a dowry scam.
    — Tanya Melendez, EW.com, 29 May 2023
  • She’s set to be married off for a substantial dowry in livestock.
    — Murtada Elfadl, Variety, 7 Dec. 2024
  • In the past, there was a tradition of including a chess set with a bride’s dowry.
    — Inna Lazareva, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2020
  • The dowry comes in many forms, including money, but some choose cattle.
    — Tim Spector, CNN, 5 July 2017
  • The husband hadn’t paid the dowry and her father didn’t like the way she was being treated.
    — Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017
  • Women feel a lot of pressure to marry young to get a dowry for the family.
    — Jessica Andrews, Teen Vogue, 18 Apr. 2018
  • 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
  • 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
  • Call it the groom's automotive dowry.
    — Laura Lane, USA Today, 18 Oct. 2025
  • Burnsby had promised not just Rosie's dowry, but an entirely new wardrobe fit for his wife.
    — Danielle Parker, CBS News, 28 May 2026
  • The bride is almost always expected to bring with her a sizable dowry.
    — Yashica Dutt, The Atlantic, 1 Aug. 2020
  • The post said five men were participating in the auction for her dowry.
    — Casey Newton, The Verge, 14 Nov. 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
  • When a girl is married, the family receives dowry — mainly goats, sheep, cows.
    — Vincent Kituku, idahostatesman, 2 June 2017
  • Now, the platform has been used by people hoping to win big dowries by selling an underage girl.
    — Makena Kelly, The Verge, 20 Nov. 2018
  • The problem is not just specific customs, such as the payment of dowries or living with in-laws.
    — The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018
  • That way, Greenland could be given to the United States as a dowry.
    — Stylecaster Editors, StyleCaster, 9 Jan. 2026
  • And dowry practices, there needs to really be a very, very, sort of a national campaign against dowry.
    — Foreign Affairs, 20 Dec. 2015
  • 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
  • My heroine marries an elderly lord with three dead wives in exchange for her little sister’s dowry.
    — Eloisa James, PEOPLE, 12 May 2026
  • 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
  • Without a dowry and—ipso facto—without suitors.
    — Danielle Parker, CBS News, 28 May 2026
  • 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
  • His wife, Winifred, from a Sheffield steel family, had come with a considerable dowry.
    — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 17 May 2021
  • When his father lost his money and her dowry in 1903, her condition worsened.
    — Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books, 23 Feb. 2021
  • At a makeshift gold stand on a Rafah street, women sell the last of their jewelry and wedding dowries for cash to feed their families.
    — Taylor Luck, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 Feb. 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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