shotgun wedding
or shotgun marriage
a wedding occasioned or precipitated by pregnancy.
Informal. a compromise, merger, accord, etc., occasioned by necessity: The coalition government was obviously a shotgun wedding.
Origin of shotgun wedding
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use shotgun wedding in a sentence
But there are some clues that this may be a shotgun wedding.
And about when do you plan that this defense marriage—this shotgun wedding—is to take place?
David Lannarck, Midget | George S. Harney
British Dictionary definitions for shotgun wedding
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
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.
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