shotgun marriage

shotgun marriage

A marriage that happens quickly due to an unplanned pregnancy. We knew it was a shotgun marriage when Frank's new wife had a baby five months after the wedding.
See also: marriage, shotgun
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a ˌshotgun ˈwedding/ˈmarriage

(old-fashioned, informal) a marriage which takes place because the woman is pregnant
This expression probably refers to the father of a woman, who threatens to shoot the man unless he marries her.
See also: marriage, shotgun, wedding
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • a shotgun wedding/marriage
  • mariage blanc
  • sham marriage
  • one flesh
  • be one flesh
  • become one flesh
  • till
  • till death do us part
  • till death us do part
  • until death us do part
References in periodicals archive
This shotgun marriage could not have survived without some beneficiaries, notably: the health sector, on which it bestows large implicit subsidies; large employers, to whom it grants a competitive advantage over smaller competitors; and policymakers, on whom it bestows greater importance and a reason to legislate.
According to tweets from journalists who were addressed by the paper's management, FT Editor Lionel Barber told staff the deal "was not and is not a shotgun marriage", saying there had been hours of conversation.
THE Vale council has formally requested a merger with Bridgend - as it seeks to pre-empt a shotgun marriage with Cardiff.
The book at first glance may seem like a shotgun marriage of two unrelated topics.
When I was a medical student, our professor of obstetrics used to illustrate the effect that stress can have on fertility by saying many a young man had been forced into a shotgun marriage with a young woman whose period was late, to find out he'd married nothing more than a bag of nerves.
Or if she and her first husband had actually tried longer to make a go of their shotgun marriage? What if she had not had the innate intelligence to succeed at Harvard Law?
Clapper, the director of national intelligence, saying Iran even has a "shotgun marriage" with al Qaeda.
POSTSCRIPT: THERE are still at least still four fiddle makers on Merseyside, if the LEP-TMP shotgun marriage wants a bit of mood music.
Are we witnessing a shotgun marriage, conveniently satisfying an urge, but grounded on self-interest that forsakes mutual respect?
An example is a case in which a radio show suggested falsely that a victim of elephantiasis was forced into a shotgun marriage because that was the only basis upon which anyone would marry him.
But it is a shotgun marriage at best, and most unlikely to last.
HOME Office bosses yesterday denied a "shotgun marriage" had been used to get a firm place to avoid Taser shortages.
The baby-faced 38-year-old has emerged as the most visible critic of the Obama-BP shotgun marriage that has thus far failed to cap the Deepwater Horizon well, accusing the president's team of a sluggish, uncoordinated response to the disaster.
Or perhaps in the euphoria of their shotgun marriage they were not really thinking at all.
Worse, some of them began to assume that ALL women were on it so if they did conceive, then it was their own fault - and, anyway, they'd probably done it deliberately to trap the poor guy into either a shotgun marriage or paying for an unwanted child.