The word 'marital' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe a relationship between two people who are married or to talk about the state of being married, for example: "The couple sought marital counseling to try and help their struggling marriage."
But how many of us actually know where the tradition of marital surname change comes from, and what it originally signified?
Abdulmumini was 13 when her husband, Ibrahim, burned to death in their marital home.
Last week's episode made a show of parallels between Kima and Daniels' marital problems in a rather contrived (I thought) sequence of the two couples having dinner with classical music playing in the background.
This gene is associated with mating behaviour in vole studies, and in human research with marital difficulties.
Ex-wife Wendi, meanwhile, was cancelled at the end of marital series three, a very conscious uncoupling.
There are marital jokes, impish rhymes and wilful metaphors that strain, in their jaunty inventiveness, against the harrowing subject matter.
I was hoping that my status as an alumnus, my fundraising track record with Amref (African Medical & Research Foundation) and the fact that I had bravely faced pre-marital wrath to take the interview, would outweigh my woeful knowledge of the higher education sector.
The conservative minister of justice recently confirmed that extra-marital sex will still be illegal after penal code reforms - not a sign of a progressive approach.
"It is a matter of fact that he previously disclosed an extra-marital relationship in a national newspaper, saying that he was happily married and that his marriage would survive … I concluded that the [Sun] plainly had a legitimate public interest in publishing its story".
The practice, which commonly involves using heated objects- often spatulas, stones, pestles and hammers- is performed often times by women (and in secret from men) in the belief that a flat, child-like chest will discourage unwanted male attention, rape and pre-marital pregnancy.
Yet events in the 19th century cannot explain why black families have grown so much more fissile since the 1960s, nor why white families now have non-marital birth rates as high as the black ones that so alarmed Moynihan in 1965.
