shotgun wedding

or shotgun marriage

See synonyms for shotgun wedding on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a wedding occasioned or precipitated by pregnancy.

  2. Informal. a compromise, merger, accord, etc., occasioned by necessity: The coalition government was obviously a shotgun wedding.

Origin of shotgun wedding

1
An Americanism dating back to 1925–30

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use shotgun wedding in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for shotgun wedding

shotgun wedding

noun
  1. informal a wedding into which one or both partners are coerced, usually because the woman is pregnant

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with shotgun wedding

shotgun wedding

An agreement or compromise made through necessity, as in Since neither side won a majority, the coalition government was obviously a shotgun wedding. This expression alludes to a marriage precipitated by a woman's pregnancy, causing her father to point a literal or figurative gun at the responsible man's head. Its figurative use dates from the mid-1900s.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.