Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh
or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)
A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover
1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of
innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the
construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor. A familiar modern
variation is enamor. Inamorata is a noun;
the noun plural is inamoratas.
Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their
niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used
to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might
obscure. One might think the matter of one’s
female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend,
(2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting
a few hairs.
A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of
necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things
without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings. One can have as many girlfriends as one can
manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time. Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of
course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men. Gay men too have
girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term
which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of
the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.
A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married,
in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law. While common law courts didn’t go as far as
ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on
the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of
the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of
terms and (3) acceptance. The fourth
component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was
assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred
payment as it were. It was one of those
rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in
that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off
an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social
and familial disapprobation. Throughout
the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost
wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not
all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s
now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances
or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly
sympathetic judge.
The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common
for all purposes. English borrowed both
the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid
nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was
one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign
because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms
were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare
(to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the
Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust),
from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun
& adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which
rely on good faith and accountability. Pronunciation
of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms
faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and
Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated. Anyway, because English doesn’t have word
endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female
betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities
exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a
political statement by all sides in the gender wars.
Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is
called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata. This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s
polka-dot line in three aspects.
Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old
English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West
Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic
wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms
existed as cognates in many European languages.
The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth
century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal
law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time. Modern variations include “common-law wife” and
the “de-facto wife”. The common-law
marriage (also known as the "sui iuris
(from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal
marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction
whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes
even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on
their merits. Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially
what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its
role. In popular culture the term is
used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless
of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court. De facto was from the Latin de facto, the
construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative
of factum (fact, deed, act). It
translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal
status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status. In general use, a common-law wife and de facto
wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some
jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute
whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of
evidence adduced.
Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle
English maistresse, from the Old &
Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix
which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons),
the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun
mistressship. In an example of
the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired
complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered”
the topic. A mistress (in this context)
was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one
man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison,
provides her with financial support. The
term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists)
have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion”
or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress
continues to endure. The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly
opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words
are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and
“mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.
This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line
in another three aspects.
Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the
illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a
relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata
could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s
wife, however fond one might be of her.
An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour
or leman didn't imply. Paramour was from the Middle
English paramour, paramoure, peramour
& paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”),
the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of
the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps
influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic. The archaic leman is now so obscure that it
tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women
in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call
someone a liar. Dating from 1175-1225,
it was from the Middle English lemman,
a variant of leofman, from the Old
English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief + man (beloved person). Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof
(dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz
and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo
& ljoo, the West Frisian leaf,
the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs,
the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the
Polish luby. Man is from the Middle English man, from the
Old English mann (human being,
person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann
(human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man). A linguistic relic, leman applied originally
either to men or women and had something of a romantic range. It could mean someone of whom one was very
fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the
latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour. In the
narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so
long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.
About the concubine, while there was a tangled
history, there has never been much confusion.
Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine
(a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from
the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin
concubīna, derived from cubare
(to lie down), the construct being concub-
(variant stem of concumbere &
concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix). The status (a woman who cohabits
with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and
other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of
inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods
of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the
laity. The concubine of a priest was
sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.
Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.
Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine). Usually, the concubine was of a lower social
order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse,
literally "disgrace" from stupere
(to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant
"a seizure, plundering, abduction"). In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also
"forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since . Concubinage
is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest. It describes a relationship in which a woman
engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or
cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage. This may be due to differences in social
rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions,
or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities. Historically, concubinage was often entered
into voluntarily because of an economic imperative. In the modern vernacular, wives use many
words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).
They rarely use concubine. They
might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana,
feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors. A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced
one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the
term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the
court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.
