shotgun marriage
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From shotgun + marriage; compare shotgun wedding.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]shotgun marriage (plural shotgun marriages)
- (countable) A marriage beginning with (or resulting from) a shotgun wedding.
- 1983 February 5, Rhonda Copelon, quotee, “Roe v. Wade: The Challenge of the Next Decade”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 28, page 5:
- It is essential for us to win back the rights of teenagers to prevent the state from using […] the denial of reproductive control to channel young women into shotgun marriages, into unwanted familial responsibilities and into dead end streets.
- 1996, George A. Akerlof et al., “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States” (journal article), reproduced in Explorations in Pragmatic Economics: Selected Papers of George A. Akerlof, Oxford University Press (2005), ISBN 978-19-925391-3, page 146:
- Others explained that a forced marriage was likely to end in an early divorce, so that the child would suffer more in a shotgun marriage than if born out of wedlock.
- (countable) A shotgun wedding itself.
- (uncountable) Such marriages, or such weddings, taken collectively.
- (countable and uncountable) Used figuratively.