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| an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| shotgun wedding | |
| —n | |
| informal a wedding into which one or both partners are coerced, usually because the woman is pregnant | |
| Main Entry: | shotgun wedding |
| Part of Speech: | n |
| Definition: | a marriage of necessity, often hurried due to pregnancy; also, a marriage that is part of a deal or accord; also called shotgun marriage |
shotgun wedding definition
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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.