the.com/concubine

means A woman who lives in a long-term sexual and domestic partnership with a man of higher status, without the legal rank or protections of a wife.

from From Latin concubina, built from com- ('together') and cubare ('to lie down'). So literally 'one who lies with' — a word that filed its subject under the bed rather than at the table. It entered English through Old French in the medieval period, already carrying the sense of a socially recognized but legally lesser partner, a status various cultures codified with far more precision than they ever codified her rights.