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alimony

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈæl.ɪ.mə.ni//
  • United States//ˈæl.ə.moʊ.ni//

A court-mandated allowance made to a former spouse by a divorced or legally separated person.

noun

  1. 1

    A court-mandated allowance made to a former spouse by a divorced or legally separated person.

    In that case he has to pay her alimony even if there are no children, and if she is one of those smart ones, interested in nothing but a good living and independence, she is set for life.

    Who won, huh? Nobody. Used to be sex was the only free thing, No longer. Alimony… palimony… it's all financial. Love is an illusion.

    Audball's latest pickup didn't seem to care where they were, or anything at all about alimony, palimony, or child support […]

  2. 2

    obsoleteNourishment, sustenance, especially for one's spirit.

    […]while we eate the bread of sorrow, drinking the wine of compunction, wee hunger and thirst after heauenly things, and shall be comforted. This is the constant alimonie of the righteous, at dinner and supper, in life and death[…]

    […] What marvell if our corne faile us, when wee faile God in the good employment of our corne?[…]So that drunkennesse, gluttony, fraud, covetisme, the unworthy receiving, or not receiving of the Sacraments, and a million more are all in cause, why God denies this fruitfull alimonie, which formerlie he gave. And doe we then aske what is the cause? when as our sinnes so superabundant are.

    His manner is to put three or foure ſtones into a ſpoone, and ſo putting them into his mouth together, ſvvallovvs them all dovvn one after another; […] [H]aving the advantage of this ſtrange vvay of alimony, he ſold his allovvance of provant at great rates; […]

Etymology

Known since the 17th century, from Latin alimōnia (“food, support, nourishment, sustenance”) (English aliment, as in alimentary), itself from alō (“to nourish”) + -mōnia (“action, state, condition”).

Forms

plural
alimonies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).