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Shotgun wedding

noun, slang

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A wedding in which the bride is already pregnant. idiomatic, slang

    "If Red Skelton's joke can still elicit laughs, it is only because there is a minority who can still remember a shotgun wedding and even recall the understandings that lay behind that insistence, now seeming quaint, that a couple sleeping together should really be married."

  2. 2
    A wedding which is made in haste or under duress. idiomatic, slang
  3. 3
    Any similarly reputedly forced partnership, between people, organizations, components, or concepts. idiomatic, slang

    "But all this fails when we try to have a shotgun wedding between the two great theories of nature, relativity and quantum theory."

Etymology

From the implication that the groom was forced to the altar by shotgun-wielding relatives of the bride.

See also for "shotgun wedding"

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